


Vacuum of God

by slire



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Alternate Universe - World War II, Gen, is this what they call a pretentious depression wank?, who am i kidding all my works are pretentious depression wanks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-27 02:15:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1711286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slire/pseuds/slire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>They fell into it. Like a fever, or a daydream.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	1. // prologue — WHITE

**Author's Note:**

> **warning1:** this fic's focus is not romance
> 
>  **warning2:** I wrote this is an emotional exorcism while working on other stuff. hey, it helped me, but it might not help you and covers many triggers, so beware

Naked and shaven, the woman wakes by an eerie humming, imprisoned in the womb of a machine.

The veneer of scrap metal and remnants of outmoded tech cuts into her feet and butt. Her knees are drawn to her chest in a replication of a foetus. Electrodes are inserted into her scalp, measuring her brain waves, the countless wires connected to the computer chamber. She dry-heaves as memories floods her disorientated mind. Previous events have left her skin eggplant toned. Wobbly like a toddler, she gets up, voltage grilling her marred soles. Her singed nerve endings spasm. The glass is technologically tinted. The woman only looks through it because someone wants her to. She bangs her fists against it, face in a horrible grimace, emitting—

Sound.

Vibrations carried through the air, effectively blocked by a 45cm layer of glass. Most wars are fought in silence.

The corridor Erik Lehnsherr is walking through is silent and pristine.

Never mind the cells on each side and the captives within. Each is 3x3m. One meter in between. Fed 05:00 and 21:00. One tenth doesn't survive a year. Svalbard's climate prevents mass graves and cremation, but manufacturing an acid pool inside the mountain facility solved the issue of body disposal. At least they're fed thanks to Svalbard's global seed vault, and kept warm since nuclear winter doesn't affect the Earth's guts.

(Most of the captives have given up, allowing themselves to be subjected to the inhumane experiments, curled against a corner of their separate bellies. Some pace back and forth, mouth foaming and injuries haemorrhaging and leaking pus. A few newcomers torture themselves with hope.)

Today, they all see him. Dead eyes. Mad eyes. Hopeful, hateful eyes.

This ordeal is requested by Shaw to check that Erik's lips are still around his cock, metaphorically speaking. Shaw has become more vicious, paranoid  _and_  overweight in his old age, but Erik does not allow him the satisfaction of seeing him flinch. There is a practised stillness to his face. He'd learned it early, when Shaw had lined up children and told Erik to choose one or Shaw would kill them all.

Erik is dressed in black, contrasting his surroundings. Why are cruel men so insistent to paint everything white? To make an illusion of purity? He finds himself preferring the barbed wire, darkness and grime of the battlefield. Suddenly, the suitcase containing a hundred names grows heavier in his hand.

After it is clear Erik will not respond to the ghastly prisoners, the glass goes white again, as if they had never existed at all.

"Magneto," a uniformed man greets. All the personnel here have the look of someone who'd score above 72 on the Milgram Obedience Examination. "He's expecting you."

He opens the door for Erik, and reveals a waiting room in the same minimalist fashion as the rest of the facility. The furnishing and colouring are simplistic and symmetrical. Loudspeakers play  _musique d'ameublement_.  **Riptide and Azazel wait for him, wordlessly guiding him to the office. The last incident was four years ago, but none of Shaw's bodyguards trust him. They think him feral.**

"Erik. How nice of you to join us."

Shaw's chair is in leather, complete with a designer glass desk. The plastic chair in front of it is small and uncomfortable, as to make the one sitting there feel just that.

Erik does not sit until Shaw gestures for him to do so. The man is eating blood sausage with honey. The dish has a tendency to fall apart or become bloated during roasting. If Erik did that to Shaw, would all the human juice inside spill over the white of his office? That'd be a pleasing sight. Erik meets Emma Frost's gaze and projects the image to her. All the indication that she saw is a small nose wrinkle.

Shaw smiles, lips wet with blood. "Want some?"

"No thank you."

"Ah, yes, you've probably seen enough blood for a lifetime." Another bite. A  _sluckkk_  noise as the sausage implodes between his stained teeth. "Excellent job staging that massacre in Liege. Wasn't what I requested, but it produced great results."

"Massacre?"

"Didn't you know? The people you guided to that bunker never got out. As you know, it was a major safe zone for civilians, compact enough to withstand nuclear war. To avoid detection by radars, they had to turn the light off, leaving them in utter darkness. Elderly, children, ill people, and pregnant women. What could happen?  **Panic**  did. Spread like a virus. Sixty harmless individuals became savages. We don't know what triggered it. The bombs above? Human nature? Perhaps there was something  _else_  down there? Soldiers stationed outside came to their rescue as soon as they heard the screaming, but the door was locked from the inside. And then... silence. Not a sound. Nobody managed—or has managed—to get the door up. Apparently, this caused a wave of paranoia among the soldiers themselves. So, a great result, regardless. That's what happens when you try to save people, Erik."

Erik's jaw tightens. This is what he chooses to tell him after no contact in 4 months. Shaw knows exactly what to say to get under his skin. "I completed the missions. I did not disobey."

Shaw dries his mouth with a napkin. Oddly demonstrative, he lets it fall.

In a flash a boy captures it; a mutant with the power of super speed. His plump face is terrified, dishevelled hair platinum (as in the ore, not the blonde variant) and clothes reserved for obedient prisoners, although his 70mA shock collar tells that he can be rendered harmless at any moment.

"Good boy, Peter. Erik, tell me all the things you've done these past months."

It extinguishes him. The stillness returns and settles. "Sabotage. Bombing. Blackmail. Manipulation. Assassination. Warfare."

"See, Peter? The real monsters are out there. Not in here. Now scram." The boy obeys. As soon as he's gone, Shaw leans back. Erik has become Shaw's pet monster again. "You had something for me," Shaw says softly.

Erik presents the suitcase. He opens it, takes out folded paper copies, an USB and a computer. Shaw chooses the USB, gesturing something to Azazel. The mutant is badly disfigured after the battles in Thailand, neck scarred, left arm amputated. He's expressionless and does as commanded. A hologram map appears above them. Red dots blink beside names.

"With this information it'll be easy to target the opposition. Emma, begin the procedure, please."

Erik rises.

Shaw does, too.  _"I did not say you were finished yet."_  He speaks German, which he only does during the nastiness Erik had been forced to partake in as a child. "Leave us." Azazel, Frost and Riptide do without further prompting. Shaw does not move until they're alone. He proceeds to circle Erik, admiring his handiwork, until he stops in front of him. "I have a special mission for you. However, I do believe I need to punish you."

After a quick scan of the room he sees 26 methods of mortally wounding Shaw through metal telekinesis. But Erik doesn't. He lets it happen. Shaw throws Erik through the room.

The impact crushes a marble statue. Pieces slide into his thigh. Shaw releases bursts of absorbed energy, and Erik is again smashed against the wall, again and again. Shaw coordinates the eruptions, sometimes dragging the moments out and other times sending an everlasting avalanche onto him. Erik curls into himself. It feels as if his body's cells are deconstructing, but screaming will worsen it. An eternity passes. When Shaw is finished, Erik is black and blue with bruises. His worth is the same as a lab rat.

_"Come here."_

Erik doesn't hesitate. He stumbles forward.

(This is the only life he's ever known.)

 _"Nein."_  And then Erik is on his knees, walking on them, until Shaw pushes once more and he's on all fours.  _"I want you to crawl."_  Erik does this too, a bruised and broken creature, worming forward until he's with Shaw's feet. He leaves a trail of blood. "Tch tch. Get up." Erik struggles to stand, swaying back and forth, trembling. He does not wish to see, but forces himself to greet his fate in the form of Shaw's fist. "I have missed this."

It collides with his face with inhuman force. His jaw fractures with a loud, awful  _crack!_

For a millisecond, Erik considers fighting back. But he doesn't.

(This is the only life he'll ever know.)

"Do not worry, we have a healer here. Like I said, I need you for something big. I want you to travel to northern Russia to buy a particular telepath for me. Now get out of my sight. You're drooling blood all over the floor."

.

.

Erik isn't two steps out of Shaw's office before Azazel appears out of nowhere, grabs his arm, mutters  _"Do not take it personally"_ and teleports into an unknown room. It is dark except several light bulbs screwed into the roof. It is 100% stone, and the nearest metal is too far to reach.

"They used to use this place for execution. They'd fill the place with gas, letting the subject into a deep, eternal sleep. Sounds relaxing?" Emma Frost reveals herself. "Don't worry. We're in the facility. Shaw won't know, and you won't tell him. I'm doing you a favour, Magneto."

She uses the name to spite him.

"I will not sugar coat it: I know that one day you will snap and kill him. Frankly, I don't care for Shaw. The reason I care is because if Shaw dies, his work decays along with him. That means all the mutants he has in his care as well. And while he's cruel and pompous, he keeps us alive. But you are a  _murderer_. You are the dog for him to point in a direction, not a leader. Your trade is death. So should you murder Shaw, then I will murder you afterwards."

This is not a threat, or a warning. This is a promise.

"You will kill me," Erik concludes, although his jaw hurts like hell.

"Yes," Emma Frost agrees. Then, quieter: "If you are smart, you'll never come back with the telepath."

.

.

An hour before take-off, Erik goes to visit the screaming woman. She's mutilated, numb and crazy. Time to put the dog down. Her suffering is needless.

Erik cocks his weapon and shoots her without a warning. 

.

.

Shaw's jet is luxurious. It is like sitting in a cinema—when those things existed in other places than in literature or ruins—in which the windows are screens, showing a documentary of a war long since passed. They avoid combat zones, but every now and then they pass over burnt cities and villages. Three stops: the Rödenberget Fortress in what once was Sweden, and two secret bases somewhere in western Russia. Shaw has allies there. Members of Shaw's inner circle go off and on. Erik is not allowed to leave. He spends his time reading.

The jet lands two kilometres from the final destination, a distance he must walk. Russian soldiers collect him halfway, exchanging no words until his ID has been scanned and Erik has said the codes. Erik doesn't quite know if they even represent the old Soviet, but they are Slavs. The soldiers lead him to the fortress. Erik feels a surge of power, because the construction is made of metal. It sings to him. Unlike Shaw, who is very reliant on his power, Erik prefers to use his as a surprise momentum. They do not know.

Erik carries another suitcase. Cash has become obsolete and the suitcase contains a biological weapon: a disease that makes the organs start their post mortem process. Antibiotics are expensive and they'd get a ton of soldiers by saying "fight for us or rot". More than enough to pay for a single mutant, so this one must be quite exquisite.

General O greets him. He's too scared to tell Erik his real name. In these ages, all bosses are fat and delusional. His buttons are about to burst. One can see the flabby skin underneath. Erik is more repulsed by him than of a decomposing corpse, but does not show it as he hands General O's assistant the suitcase.

This is all very...

Quiet.

The last time Erik was truly awake was four years ago, when he'd broken Shaw's nose. He walks in a coma, answering questions, blasé. The soldiers marching after them do not unnerve him. Their helmets are made of steel. Erik twists his thumb and a tiny bulk appears in the nearest man's headgear, reassuring him that he could squelch their little heads if he so desires.

"I think you would like a demonstration of the mutant's power, yes?" General O does not wait for an answer. "Prisoner number seven is  _ferocious_. Thankfully for you, we have done the hardest part of the job: categorizing him, restraining him, surgically implanted tracking devices, among other things... He is very weak at the moment."

In another life, Erik might've reacted with rage at the inhuman treatment of a fellow mutant.

"Good. I'm glad this won't be a lengthy affair."

General O smiles a wet lipped smile. "Yes. He is ready for you to take away."

Erik is led deeper into the fortress. Hadn't he been blanketed in stillness and steel, there'd been a sinking feeling twisting in his gut. This seems to be the scientific part of the construction. Unlike Shaw, who likes displaying his rats, there are no indications of evil deeds but the stink of hospital and blood.

"What are you to Shaw?" General O smiles even wider. This is the first thing Erik can't answer without thinking. "Are you his pet? A dog, yes? Because it'd be fitting to send back your head as a token, Mr. Frost. If you don't survive, that is."

Frost?

Why on earth do they think—?

Ah. They believe he's Emma Frost.

_'Oh for fuck sake.'_

An invisible door opens, and Erik is thrown into it before he can object. It slams shut after him, and voices ring from the loudspeakers, but he blocks them out and starts banging on the door. It is completely dark around him. He stops as he recalls the woman in the turbine womb, face gnarled with horror.

Something rustles behind him.

Someone turns the light on. Bright, unbearable, blue. He shields his face. Turns around. Sees a silhouette of a man. He has his hands in the pockets of his scrubs, facing Erik.

"Hello. My name is Charles Xavier." It is toneless, and he speaks with a British accent. "I'm a telepath, and they want me to murder you."

The man pauses and tilts his head to the side, listening to the Russian gibberish spewed over the loudspeakers. Erik's sight adapts to the light. Xavier is a pale and skinny man in his twenties. Nothing odd in particular except massive injuries. His wounds have wounds and his bruises, bruises. Xavier looks to have been maltreated regularly in a long time. A distinct example is his black eye: a dark purple eye lid, reddening circularly, until the last ring is yellowed as if greased with iodine. A cut goes from the upper bridge of his nose to eyebrow, cutting through the latter in the middle, ending about 5cm from the end of it. It is sewn shut with black thread. Too precise to be done in anger. Xavier has been tortured by someone cold and calculated. However, the man is not broken, nor is he scared. There is steel in his eyes and Erik wishes he could bend it.

 _They say you're a telepath, but I don't think so. Because then you're remarkably weak._ Xavier walks closer. _However, I do believe you're a mutant. Do you work for them?_

The voice cuts through Erik's thoughts and defences, slicing into his brain like a cold razor sliding across an eyeball. He thinks of all the things he can say to this man and settles on, "Fuck you."

Xavier smiles. His split lip makes it ugly.

Meanwhile, the Russian gibberish continues until two distinct screamed words separate themselves from the rest. Erik doesn't know much Russian but know this: "KILL HIM!" Xavier jerks. Smoke rises from his neck and wrists, where a metal collar and matching bracelets reside to keep him under control. God knows what else they've sewn into him. When he doesn't immediately do as ordered, an ear splitting sound erupts. Aural Torment, a common strategy. Like a dog whistle for humans. Xavier falls to his knees, clutching his ears.

For Erik, it's an alarm clock. He stands up straight and extends his arms.

The loudspeakers explode. What has been Xavier's room for the past months caves in on itself. The polished steel walls turn bulky, form twisting like jelly, and the thick door  _curls_. It strains him. It is his turn to fall to his knees.

"Telekinesis," Xavier mutters, but the awe only lasts so long—then it turns ambitious and cunning. Erik feels him tryingly probe his mind, not quite as sharp as before. "Fascinating, too."

"Get out."

"Your options are limited. You are not strong enough to go on. Too many mental locks. There have been other people meddling in your head, haven't there?" Gunshots echo on the other side of the ruined door. "We don't have much time. Listen to me and—"

Erik hisses and clutches his head while Xavier walks towards him, even if the steel still chants and curves.

 _—_ _allow me to enter your mind, Erik. Please. Let me in let me in letmeinletmein..._

It is a combination of stress and persuasion, because Erik bars his teeth and shouts, "Fine!" His defences drop like an atom bomb. Xavier reacts by slamming his hand flats against Erik's head.

_This will be rather painful. I'd say I'm sorry, but that would be a lie._

His world goes white.

.

.

When Erik comes back to consciousness, the first thing that hits him is the cold. Rather obvious, really, as he has snow up to his waist. But there is a different cold, also, one he hasn't felt in a long time. Never mind that he is sticky with blood that isn't his—so much in fact that his hair is soaked and it runs into his eyes—and never mind that there's a half dead telepath beside him in the snow.

His mind is cut open.

Clear.

He is free again.

Erik does not recall what Xavier did with his body, but he can't go back. He supposes he should feel empty or frustrated, as he has served Shaw since he was eight and that is now over. But instead there is icy calm. There is no turning back. If Shaw does not kill him, Emma will.

"This is your fault," Erik says matter-of-factly to the unconscious mutant, briefly considering leaving him there to die. But that'd be a waste of telepath. Why would he choose to stop here? Exhaustion? Has the cold killed him? He's stolen thicker clothes, so no. Erik looks around. They're on top of a hill. The facility or the jet isn't anywhere near them. But in the west, there is a village. That is where Erik heads.

Or, takes three steps towards it.

Then he turns, watching Xavier lie there. He's going to die. And if he doesn't, the Russians will collect him. That isn't an option. His arm is outstretched, revealing numbers. Unlike Erik's, they're not tattoos, but  _carvings_.

Erik walks back to him immediately.


	2. // arc I: survival — THE OLD

Drip. Drip. Drip.

In lieu of coming from a sink, it comes from the two strangers. It is water mixed with blood, colouring the fallen snow sorbet. The door creaks as it opens and shuts in tact with wind. There's an occasional crackle of the hearth. Apart from this, the inn is dead silent.

The two men are not family, which is easy to tell despite the deluge of blood that coats the conscious one. He looks hostile, teeth barred, shoulders rigid. His unconscious companion is more delicate, but the harm he's endured—flesh purple, blue and black—makes it hard to see.

(Perhaps Erik should have rethought his strategy. Xavier's weight is heavy on his shoulders.)

"We need a room for the night."

Instantaneously, a  _click click click_ reverberates through the tavern. Every single villager is armed to the teeth, regardless of age or sex. Rifles. Guns. Homemade editions. Knives. Bats. A pitchfork, held by a small girl. This is how habitants of small communities survive.

The innkeeper stops cleaning a glass for a moment. "Most of us do not understand English, but we do understand other things, stranger. Who did you kill?"

Erik's lips thin.

The innkeeper introduces a time schedule to speed things up. "If you don't answer within three seconds, I'll have to scrub your brains out of the floorboards tonight."

3.

2—

"Soldiers."

"What soldiers?"

The door is open at that moment. The mountains reside outside, behind the hills. Somewhere beneath them lies the fortress. Erik points towards where he came from. As if he's cast a spell, the inn's habitants calm down.

"Ah,  _those_  soldiers. Well, the enemy of my enemy is my friend." The innkeeper gestures towards a staircase. "Let me show you a room."

.

.

The room can best be described through its furnishing: a horsehair sofa, tables with mug rings, a closet with gilded handles, portraits of unsmiling Victorians, and a bed with iron brass. Erik prefers the antique style to Shaw's sterilized taste.

The innkeeper's wife is a skilled  _babka_ ; an old wise woman. She helps him peel the dead soldier's coat from Xavier's body. The stench of new wounds and old wounds reopened hits them like a foul gust. She brings stinging nettle to stem bleeding, mumiyo for ulcers, iodine to daub into bruises, among others. Vodka, too, as an antiseptic. Garlic hangs from the roof to halt potential disease.

Erik sits beside Xavier on the bed. Located beside him are towels, a first aid kit, and a washing bowl. Red swirls in the scalding water; clouds escalating as new bits of metal drops into it. The procedure before him is a small machinery. Needles, stitching with delicate motions. The wet cloth on Xavier's' forehead is inverted every 10 minutes. Erik focuses on a bullet that exploded on impact, leaving it clustered inside the arm. It is easier like this. Less intimate. Less thinking. He finds shrapnel from older battles. Xavier's body is a map that reveals that he's fought before, each scar telling a story. They both have numbers infused on their skin.

This is the tensest 24 hours of Erik's life.

The primary concern is to keep Xavier warm. That phase is soon complete. What resides now is the threat of overheating. 10 minutes become 2, as the cloth is immediately inflamed. Erik checks the thermometer regularly. The fever could be a result of the shift in temperature or environment. Erik hopes General O's men haven't stuffed him with time clock illnesses.

("This, the most dangerous period," the innkeeper's wife says. "Depends on the strength of will.")

When Xavier wakes, he's soaked with sweat and delirium. Wild eyes. Erik has theories like fright, possible alterations and memory loss. He lays a hand on Xavier's forehead, checking his condition. Xavier slowly reaches out to touch Erik's head. Erik captures his hand in a millisecond. "Don't even think about it."

To his surprise, Xavier speaks, "Wh—where?"

"Took you to the village. The people here are very hospitable after I told them we were enemies of General O."  _'Stupid name.'_  "We're renting a room at the inn."

Xavier falls back again. He slips in and out of consciousness. The thermal reading has reached a decline when he wakes again, with the same crazed look. PTSD, perhaps? He seems to calm down again. "It's very quiet," he says hoarsely, swallowing spit that isn't there. "Not like in the cell, but still, quiet. I can hear 'em, and then I can't. It comes in waves... unbalanced. I don't like it." Afterwards he enters a rather stressful cycle, in which fever dreams mends with reality. "No don't! Don't! I'll... I'll do it, just don't..." Erik frowns at Xavier's pained expression. He passes out from exhaustion shortly afterwards.

The condition stabilizes, except a few attacks. They begin with paroxysm—sudden, ripping, hacking coughs in which Xavier is near coughing up his internal organs. Other times he goes so very still, and his breath so very shallow, that Erik must lay his head near his heart to check that he's alive.

Hours pass. He's comatose until he's not. Pale and clammy, he watches Erik work, silently. The innkeeper's wife gets hot milk with honey for Xavier's sore throat. It gives Erik a small break to wash off the blood.

When he returns, Charles is somewhat awake. He gets right to business. "You have a flesh wound on your back unlike the others. What happened?"

"Microchip. Had to... get it out."

"What did you use? Knives? Fingers? It's too precise."

Xavier pauses. "Used you."

"Me," Erik says flatly.

"Yes. The restrains as well." The telepath holds up his wrists, wincing, revealing rashes created by handcuffs too tight. His neck has a matching one. "Made you kill people, too."

"Ah. How many?"

Something that is a very ordinary question for Erik to encounter (his most common answer is  _"I don't keep a count_ ", which entertains Shaw) makes Xavier fret. "Lots. I don't... I don't know, really." Xavier straightens, stoic again. "Don't think me weak. When I was thirteen, I made twenty men shoot themselves." There it is again—the crazed glint, spoiled by a hacking cough. "...Your mind is very messed up, Lehnsherr. I took control almost instantly. Contains nicely paved trails of another telepath."

( _"Do it, boy. Or would you rather Emma here went in and did it for you? You'd have no recollection of it afterwards, and I'd imagine you'd wonder why there's blood under your fingernails. Yes, of course, it_ is _better being aware, isn't it? Now aim the coin at a major artery."_ )

What unnerves him more than the thought of Frost messing with his mind is not knowing if Xavier has.

Erik chooses not to respond. The conversation dries out. The bowl is now full of shrapnel, which Erik curls into a ball for easier disposal. His current focus is handling the injuries, either left breathing, or covered with either remedies or rags to absorb leakage. Dressing his wounds is done with utmost care. He's bandaged thoroughly.

Xavier awakens once more, and stares at him for a while. The soup the innkeeper's wife brings returns some colour to his cheeks. "You want to know what I know concerning  _you_."

Erik tenses.

"It's extremely hard to tell the motivations behind each thought—if there is one at all—and which thought is yours and not a product of instruction. This is what I know: Your name is Erik Lehnsherr. You're a mutant that possesses a mastery of magnetism. You work for a man you fantasize about butchering. Your past is full of pain and you use it to power your gift. Using my own knowledge and the name they yelled during the bloodbath, I deduced that you're Magneto.  _The_  Magneto." Xavier leans back, muttering something along the lines of  _"god save us all"_. "You're not stupid, so you have figured that their surgeries and beatings have diminished my power. Plus, I was too busy killing to analyze you. But I want to. Need to."

"No," Erik says.

"You allowed me last time."

"That was different. A life and death situation. I _'_ m not letting you inside my head again."

"What makes you think this isn't a life and death situation, too? Tell me who you are. And what Shaw wanted with me. Lives depend on it."

Erik sneers, "I will tell you nothing."

Xavier sighs, and says, "Then I must—"

_—_ _rip it out of you._

Two fingers pressed against Erik's head. White edges at his vision. Erik  _hates_  white.

Seeing as how Xavier's weaker now, the procedure is much more painful. Sharper. For both. But Erik is stronger now. Xavier ruined some of those mental locks, cutting through the cluster and making a fine line. Fury pours through it. Although the battle is mental, Erik's powers manifest physically.

Doorknobs rattle, the framed photos shake, the bed trembles...

But it isn't enough.

Charles is livid and bitter. His rage is an ancient thing, gained through all the fates he's encountered and all the emotion he's absorbed, channelled through him, cool like a river. He's determined to win this battle. But Erik's mind is complicated. There are layers to peel and repressed memories to rupture. He compares it to walking through a mist, grabbing at shadows.

A strategy Erik has never considered until now is projection. He'd discovered it as a boy to get back on Frost when she tattled on him. Erik's thoughts whirl (for Charles, a maelstrom he cannot escape) until it settles on a singular memory:

_Holding a hand of a girl scared shitless. Guiding her though tunnels and doors, skilfully avoiding guards. "Calm down," he hears himself say, "and trust me. Please, Magda. You must trust me." They're underground somewhere. Grey walls turn ragged, unpolished. They match the girl when she turns her head, revealing the other side of her face. Ropey, purple veins that embedded into hardening, greying flesh like an alien parasite, weaving around her eye to sink into the corner and poison it liquid black._

_The memory prompts another one; a more faded, fainter sequence of a the girl—smaller and unblemished—crying and pumped full of liquid with needles and tubes, and a voice asking "See, Erik, how easily beauty is tarnished?"._

_When it jumps back to the older version of the girl, she's running no more. Instead there's an unrecognizable mess of punctured flesh with entrails weeping out of holes shot by .45 calibres ammo. The perspective shakes because Erik shook back then. A small applause echoes behind him. "Told you so," says the voice._

Xavier recoils. "What the hell was that?"

"A memory," Erik says simply, hands in his pockets. Then, leeringly, "You don't want to be inside my head." Now, Xavier is the one pushing himself away from Erik, but he's hurt, slowing the process. Erik follows him on the bed so that they're face to face. "I dare you to do it again."

"If you're going to fuck," says the innkeeper suddenly standing in the doorway, "try to be a bit more quiet."

It is not crazy of him to deduce this. After all, one man is lying almost on top of another half naked man, faces close. Erik moves off at once. Xavier clears his throat. "Duly noted," he rasps.

Erik moves to stand with the window. It lies in the direction of the fortress. The landscape outside is grey. He imagines that they'd come from there, hundred, thousands, millions of nightmarish ant/human hybrids, crawling over the hills to consume the village like tar.

"Thank you," Xavier finally says, subdued. "I should've said it sooner. I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Erik says. He dislikes being apologized to. "I understand your motivations, but that doesn't mean I agree with them."

"I see that now." Xavier sits up in his bed. "But... I can't trust you. Your reputation precedes you. I've heard tales..." He blinks them away. "I don't understand why you're doing any of this."

"You are my best option."  _'You are all I have left.'_ "I can't go back. Even if I won't let you inside my mind, I have demanded no questions from you.

"But you trust me." A statement. Not a question.

Erik turns. His face is shadowed. "I trust you not to kill me. We have a common goal."

"And what is that goal?"

"Survival."

Xavier is unreadable. He carefully pushes the covers aside, and stands up using the bed frame to support himself. "...I agree. I do want to survive, along with others like me. That's my goal as well—the goal of the organization I was once part of. Saving people. That's why you ran with that little girl, right? To rescue her?"

"You saw what happens when I try save people."

He holds out a hand. "Then let's make sure that doesn't happen to anyone else." Erik walks to him, the wooden floor squeaking under his woollen clad feet. He comes face to face with Xavier and grabs his hand. The two killers close the deal with a firm handshake.

"Erik," Xavier says.

"Charles," Erik replies politely.

They do not say  _"this is the start of a beautiful partnership"_  because both men are too blood soaked to be beautiful—nor it is a beautiful friendship, because they're not friends. There is harshness and certainty to them, at least. None of them thinks that they haven't got the guts to do this. It feels meant to be.

.

.

Erik goes downstairs to the inn's first floor—the pub area. It's in the same vintage style as the upstairs bedroom. Burgundy walls, oaken furniture, and photos of lustrous coca cola women. The winter wind licks into the crevices in the windows and whines to be let in. Cattle moo as they pass the bar, being taken to the pastures. Erik seats himself opposite of the innkeeper.

"What will it be? It's on the house."

"Doppelbock."

"You German? ...Never mind. Flags mean nothing when torn to shreds." The innkeeper readies a tankard. The beer is a dark brown with ruby highlights, malty,  _strong_. "I take it that you're tankborn. You see, here in this village, we're well acquainted about the Factories. I think you are, too."

Factories.

Mighty, towering constructions of stone and concrete, surrounded by giant walls patrolled by veteran guards. The Holocaust, upgraded. Factories destroy children to recreate them into perfect soldiers—i. e., tankborn or tankbred. Factories are specialized for mutants, captured or bred in stations. Technology is rarely helpful. These days, everything is designed to kill you. Erik was in such a place until Shaw bought him, beginning their relation by shooting Erik's mother.

"That thing up there is a Factory. Every three years, they come here. They'll strap devices to us, looking for mutants, or sometimes even normal kiddies for target practise. Because of the radiation from the nuclear wars, the chance increases significantly. We've had many children taken from this village." The innkeeper has a sort of seen-it-all look, but now he's fuming. He sedates himself with moonshine. "Our little Sofia was taken from us. They shot my brother when he tried to stop them from taking her away. She died last year after a soldier  _accidently_  cracked her skull, twelve years old. All we have left is Dina. She'll be eight come spring."

"Is she a mutant?"

He turns serious. "Yes. A healer."

"Will you be able to hide her?"

"No. This chance lessens with you here, but we hoped you can help. In five days, they will come for their three year check. Our sources say they have advanced scanners. I will not let them take her."

"Should they get here while I'm here, there will be bloodshed," he says matter of factly, finishing his beer.

"I'm counting on it."

.

.

The innkeeper lied.

The soldiers from the Factory come the day after, yelling and banging on doors as they march through the streets. The innkeeper and his wife have been summoned outside for the ritual. The villagers are ushered past the inn.

"Knew it," Erik hisses. He's already packing, having gone through the house during moments of wake. Rations, clothing, ammo... He shoves them in a bag. "You cannot trust anybody."

Charles is quieter. He hopes that the echoing  _rat-at-ta_  outside is purely to scare. "It is perfectly understandable. He wished that his daughter would be saved." He knew as well? Idiot telepath. "And she will be. Don't you dare say anything else. You're with me, remember?"

"You want us to go against the army outside? You're in no condition to fight them. It's a miracle you can walk."

"Then where will we go?"

"The Train."

"Ah. So you know about it." Of course he did. He'd researched this place beforehand. Besides, the Train was wide known. Its tracks went through all of Europe, having become somewhat of a pacifist transportation method. "Yes, the innkeeper didn't want to tell us that either. Afraid we'd go. We cannot leave them."

"Our goal was survival,  _Charles_."

"That means survival for other people too."

Erik is sick of this. He makes a quick decision. "Control me."

"What?"

"If you can control me, you can do the same to the soldiers. You said it was easy."

Charles holds out a hand and  _pushes_. Erik steps aside and allows Charles easier access. This goes on for about 30 seconds. Moisture forms at his temple. He trembles. Erik feels it tug, but not anything else. The connection shakes too much. True to Erik's theory, Charles gives up. He is too old to say "I told you so". Instead he settles on a quiet, "We need to get out of here."

.

.

The air is thick with the humidity before rain, sky low and clouds full.

They crawl through the dirt of back allies, Charles scanning the area for souls, finding none. "I may not be in my healthiest state, but I'm not completely useless _._  There's no one here. Their thoughts come from the east. An incoherent babble, a vibrating murmur... I can't separate them. Fear is apparent. Hate. Anger. But also a sense of resigned coolness from the soldiers."

"East is where we have to go, correct? So in that direction."

The path becomes open. The mist hides them, but Charles claims everybody is at the same spot. He moves a little slower than Eric, harm on his feet slowing him down. They enter a graveyard, crawling through the muddy tracks. It seems like there are more graves than living villagers. The everlasting war has taken its toll, especially among children. "They're inside a church!" Charles realizes as he sees the big construction through the mist.

"Let's go around it to reach the train tracks. We've gone far enough," Erik whispers. He has a sinking feeling. He's seen this sort of thing before. But Charles is more impatient, and in a way, more naïve.

"I have to see. It seems strange to put them all in one spot."

"No. We're not going further." Erik refuses. He forces Charles to look at him. "I agreed to survive. Should their censors discover us, we'll be butchered. Or worse, taken back. Do you want more tubes stuck into you?" Charles blanches. "We'll go  _now_ , even if I have to drag you there."

Then Charles has the nerve to smirk. "I don't think you'll do it."

"Why?"

"Because you're attracted to me."

Erik stiffens, interrogated. He doesn't care for aesthetics, but he can't stop his body from responding. Not that he has a strained relationship with sex—motto being  _fuck and run_ —but he almost never has time nor energy for human relations. And Charles is pretty, in a ruined porcelain doll sort of way. It is not something he can control. Charles must've found it rummaging around in his head, as attraction resides on the surface.

"It means nothing," he growls.

"Didn't say it did. But you did sit with me for nearly twenty-four hours making sure I was alright."

Erik contemplates breaking Charles' nose.

But he has a better idea. Without a word, he continues towards the church. When they're close enough, he stops. First, the church is in complete darkness—and then there is light.

Sharp, quick lightning. On and off, on and off, in milliseconds.

Gunshots.

An execution of a whole village. Erik can see small red hands beating at the glass until they tremble and stall. Holes appear in the glass. Murky liquid pours from the crack under the doors and onto the stairwell.

The door opens. Erik shoves Charles' head  _down_. Soldiers jog out and make a line. A blonde teenager wearing a captain's uniform goes last, but doesn't close the door until he's yells, "You try to escape and we kill even  _more_  kids!" A hole has been drilled in the wall. Soldiers roll an apparatus forth. The numbering on it is the same as the biological weapon Erik traded with General O. He becomes very aware what is about to happen.

"You don't want to see what happens next," Erik whispers. "We can't stop them."

"I can hear them now. Screaming. Can you?"

He can't. They're screaming inside, then. Charles seems receptive to strong emotion, even more so than before. It's true what he said about the instability of his power.

Erik holds Charles' wrist, leading them in the opposite direction. The bag is heavy on his shoulders. He's cold and muddy. But it'll have to do. They pass an overgrown stonewall, and follows it until they're far enough away from the church—far enough to see it being set ablaze.

They're almost there and Charles collapses, hands on his ears, eyes tightly shut. He groans in pain. "Shut up, stop, please..." Erik sees it burn behind him, flames licking up the grand structure. The captain was a mutant. He'd seen it. And according to the equipment sewn onto his suit, his power is fire.

Erik feels the metal of the train tracks in front of them vibrates and thrums with energy. The Train is close.

"They're burning to death," Charles breathes. "I  _feel_  them." But then he pauses for a little while, frowning. "There's something else... someone else... A little girl! She's in the outskirts of the town. She saw the church burn. She's just seven, and  _she saw them burn_..."

Dina.

But they don't have time.

And it is Erik's time to burst. Panic sneaks into his voice. " We need to go! Why can't you see reason?"

"I'm sorry Erik. But my reason is different from yours."

And then he's standing again, turning around, and walking back the way they came from. No trumpet, no fanfare. Just wind. Charles leaves Erik standing in the snow. Two black dots, whose distance increases. Erik makes his way to the miniature station.

He imagines Charles finding the little girl, saving her, telling her that it's going to be alright when it's so obviously not. He's the sort of person who'd do that.

( _"Everyone you try to save dies, Erik. Doesn't that say something about your characters?"_ )

"Shut up."

He's not quite sure what he'll do when he gets on the train, or where it'll take him. Being lonesome leaves one vulnerable, especially when there's numbers on one's arm that's checked by every potential employer. They'd type his number into the computer, and the photos and articles they'd find would not be flattering.

When he turns around (he shouldn't do that—Charles and the girl is dead, dead, dead), the whole village is aflame. The fire mutant has gone berserk. Even if there were villagers hiding in their houses, they're ashes now.

The train arrives. As it is electronic, it has no operator, and it pauses at every stop for 10 minutes.

He chooses a carriage that's a bit behind and empty. There are seats that can become beds and lots of blankets. Other essentials are brought by the passenger. He looks over the field. Nothing. It has started raining, though. He goes inside, sits down, and waits.

_Erik!_

His eyes open wide. Charles?

_I have the girl! She's unharmed, and she's a mutant, and she healed my legs, and oh my, am I running fast! This is amazing!_

Oh, defiantly Charles, high on adrenaline and madness. Erik peeks out the carriage door. He sees two people running towards them, very far away. The problem is, the train starts moving. Erik throws himself out of it just before the door slams shut.

The train is leaving.

And that is not the biggest problem: Soldiers are following Charles, including the pyromaniac mutant. He seems to be blowing fire at them to make them run faster.

Erik stares at the train. He extends his mind. Focuses. Grabs hold of it—and pushes it  _back_.

The strange metallic boom echoes through the mountains.

That is when the soldiers open fire.

Erik falters, letting go of the train to stop the bullets aimed for Charles and the girl on his back. Some shoot friends in the chaos. The train takes up speed. Erik has the sensation of being torn in two.

_You need to focus on something else than hate. It's not strong enough._

_'No. It's just that I don't have enough hate. Do you think you can find a strong enough memory?'_

He sees Charles clearer, now, telling the girl to hold on and pressing two fingers against his head. Silence pass. A volcano explodes inside Erik; a bunch of eruptions threatening to explode his mind and guts. No one ever cleans the train, so it'd be stuck there forever. Erik is starting to feel the insanity Charles is so well acquainted with. Charles sounds horrified,  _I... I can't find anything positive enough._

 _'Of course there isn't.'_  Erik yells in pain, but it gains a hysterical touch, mouth curled into a grin with far too many teeth.  _'Find a negative memory. Something deep and rotten.'_

Charles does.

It concerns Shaw of course and Emma Frost. The scene begins with foreshadowing. The two of them are standing there, saying,  _"As sad as it may be to lose such an exquisite experience, I don't think his young mind will handle it. At least we know he_ can _do such a thing. Emma, if you'd please...?"_  And then it plays what she took from him, while he sees her face displaying guilt for the very first time.

 _'Ah. I did not know I was the one to do that,'_ Erik thinks as he's drowned in emotion.

He screams.

The train comes back.

Charles is closer now, that's all he registers. He's in a blurred world of pain and madness, each joint cracking with nervous energy. He sees the soldiers. This is what he thinks: I want them gone.

And as he commands, the guns are suddenly against their own throats. He doesn't know why, but there's something pleasing about them shooting themselves in the neck.

_No! We don't have to kill them, Erik!_

Oh? Then Charles  _and_  the little girl will die.  _'Do you want that? To see another little girl look like she's gone through a meat grinder?'_ He projects the image he can so easily imagine. _'That's what'll happen. Have a good look, Charles.'_  That seems to have lit the match. Erik feels the subtle shift in Charles' mind—which is now very connected to his own—and the old equality advocate, crack. He feels the acknowledgement.

The soldiers don't shoot themselves.

Instead, the telepath goes into their heads and  _twists_.

They're dead before they hit the ground.

Charles slows down when he reaches the station. He's panting. The mad glint is fading, but it's still there. The girl has buried her head in his neck, crying silently. They stagger inside the chosen carriage. Right before Erik lets go, the goddamned fire mutant has reached them.

"I'm gonna grill you inside that fucking thing," he says madly. "I'm Pyro, master of flames!"

_Creative._

"Not the moment for snark, Charles." Erik rises a hand, making the nearest light post bend and curls around Pyro's feet, turning him upside down. He's quite ready to suffocate him to death when Charles—the old one, he thinks—lays a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't kill him, Magneto. Let him send the message."

The Train shoots away, leaving a burning village and a sea of corpses behind.


	3. // arc I: survival — THE CHILDREN

"Had you mentioned we'd be doing  _this_ , I'd have brought different shoes," Emma Frost says as she nearly steps into some scattered intestine. It comes out nasal because of her filter mask. Hadn't she worn it, the stench would've been unbearable.

Bodies surround them, stacks piled high, cooked medium well. Some are fused together; a black mass with arms and legs poking out at odd angles, mostly found in dead end allies—villagers who tried to run. They didn't get far, since most of the village's inhabitants were old people. A lone, fat corpse sits on their knees in the middle of the street, hands reaching towards the heavens. From the waist (waste?) up, everything's scorched. A fitting comparison would be if you put a 150IB meatloaf in the oven for 5 hours.

It confirms Frost's suspicion: Pyro is fucked in the head.

Giving him as a gift to the Russians had been a bad idea. The years there have left him with an unusual vocabulary and a taste for cruelty. But no matter what they put him through, he'd always remain loyal to Shaw. The latter is less repulsed than her. Why, he seems to be enjoying himself, rubbing his gloved hands together. It makes a nasty sound.

"John," Shaw greets.

The blonde turns around, aggressively quick. He moves fast for someone who's been stuck to a lamp post for a while. Few things remain of the snivelling little boy whose only interests were Gothic fiction and religion. Then he sees Shaw and goes on all fours. An accent laces his words, "Master.  _True_  master."

"Is this is your work?" Shaw asks. Pyro nods, the whole of him shaking with the effort. He's a dog, this one. Broken. Deranged. Shaw nonchalantly continues, "I presume you left some of them alive."

"Yes, master. I asked the sinful couple who'd harboured the  _turncloaks_..." Pyro puts emphasis on words he dislikes, "...but they would not tell me anything useful. So I tortured and crucified them." He points to two giant wooden crosses, perhaps 3 meters, tilted slightly to the left. The figures on the cross have spikes driven through their wrists—a vile imitation of Jesus' crucifixion. It's hard to tell what the old couple died off; haemorrhage, hyperthermia, blows to the head... The legs are broken. Such attention to details!

"What did they tell you?" Shaw asks, amused.

"I asked them if they admitted to hiding and helping apostates. They shared a look, and the old man said, crying, 'I know no traitors, only human beings'."

"And you are certain it was Erik who hid here, along with the telepath who annulled those men?"

Annul.

To cancel, to void, to obliterate.

It  _is_  a nice definition of what they found in the snow alongside the train tracks.

The corpses had been so swollen from the tundra turned marshland that they looked like white balloons. Those left alive were brain dead and drooling. Once granted permission, Pyro had set fire to them and watched them all crisp and pop.

"Yes," Pyro confirms. "I knew it was Lehnsherr. I thought he'd go on the Train, but he didn't. Waited for the... the clairvoyant, who had a child with him. We were ordered to test the biological weapon, observe the effects, and conduct a massacre. We knew Lehnsherr and the telepath were there. Finding them would've been swift. The Train... we didn't know. The factory keepers have private methods of transportation and know nothing of its schedule."

"So Erik's betrayal was because of a few mistakes and bad timing?" Shaw shakes his head, amused. "I thought he'd grown up enough by now not to believe in miracles. Especially as his little world will end quite soon."

.

.

What is war to a child?

Pain. Ultimately, loss. A never ending lack of control.

Charles studied psychology back when he was confined behind tall walls. Children are simplified when it comes to understanding, far more difficult when it comes to socialisation. The girl of eight displays common vulnerabilities: withdrawal and worrying. Like her mother, she's a muscular little lady, huddled in a quilt Erik brought. She will not let go of Charles' arm. He introduces structure by telling her who he is and where they'll go, made plain: Eastern Europe, in a city called Beist, surrounded by hills. A safe place. She falls asleep after Charles manages to coax some seafood into her.

Erik prefers a dark corner of the carriage with metal pressing against him, soothing him. He cares little for psychology. For him, it's easier to contemplate the fly dying in the windowsill. On its back. Buzzing till it goes still. Question like, say, when he became attracted to Charles, that's tougher.

"You could've said something, you know," Charles says.

"I don't do well with children." It is very honest. "Saw you mouthing a list over symptoms and functions. PTSD, noncompliance, chance of depression... You studied psychology, correct? Freud, Jung?"

"I find pedagogy more fulfilling than sex and spirituality, thank you," Charles says. He lifts the girl up and lays her on the couch. Compassionate for a man that just neutralized dozens of soldiers. "We need to talk."

He sits down on the floor, opposite from Erik. The clouds outside the window remain low and fat with rain, wetlands never ending. The sun is descending. It'll take some time until they'll reach Beist. Good thing Erik packed durable nourishment in tins and jars; potted, brined, smoked meat and vegetables.

"Firstly, thank you for saving my life again. And for waiting. Because of it, I've decided to trust you more. I want to trust you completely, but I can't."

A curt nod. "Will you tell me about the plan? I heard what you told the girl."

"The girl's name is Dina," Charles corrects. "And the reason we'll stop in Beist is because I got allies there."

"What kind of allies?"

The Train stops. There are occupants in the other carriages (Erik can feel the vibrations) but who they are no one's business. The Train exists in a different world. There are rumours of people who live on it.

"The reason for my capture was my involvement in an independent nongovernmental organization. Our goal was the destruction of Factories and the freeing of mutants and humans alike. Equality. Peace."

"Peace," Erik repeats. It sounds foreign on his tongue. "Seen a lot of dead NGO members." He distinctively recalls a girl with white ribbons in her hair that demonstrated in front of a tank, à la the famous Chinese photo. The ribbons weren't so white afterwards. "Seen a lot of dead kids."

"The toll is high, but at least the kids perish with the thought of doing a difference."

"They do so believing a lie." One more insect, dying in the windowsill.

"No. Truth."

"Truth is subjective."

Charles straightens. "If you find it futile, why are you here with me? I'm certain that if you went back to your boss begging for mercy and presented my head as a gift, he'd take you back."

Erik swallows. Once. A single bob of his Adam's apple. The rest of him is stoic. When he answers, his tone is blasé, "And I'm certain Magneto's head would make your allies applaud you."

"Am I talking to Magneto right now? Or am I conversing with Erik Lehnsherr, the man who set his own life on the line saving me? Twice?" The metal rumbles in return, sharing Erik's discomfort. Charles sighs. "Listen. Please. I don't mean to upset you and again I  _am_  grateful, but believe me when I say I saw something in you. A will to fight. A fire."  _'A fire that'd burn the world down if I let it, which I won't,'_ Charles thinks. "I know you won't give me to Shaw."

Erik looks like he's going to bristle

(—and this is good, Charles thinks, because that'd mean he'd let loose and—)

but instead, he hastily rummages around in the satchel, grabs a bottle and pours in.

"You brought alcohol?"

"Yes."

The old fashioned mentor vanishes. Pieces of chalk break off, revealing an exhausted young man. "Gimme."

"...No."

"You're cruel." Charles crosses his arms, but he's smirking. "What if you'd bet it?"

"If we'd have a chess board, I'd suggest a game instead of a bet."

"That would be nice. Too bad all we have is a bottle of moonshine. We could play with that," Charles says. It is meant as a joke, but sparks an idea in Erik's head. At his expression, Charles frowns, "I was joking. What are you thinking about, spin the bottle?"

Erik ignores that. "A game of truth, since you're so fond of both. The rules are simple. I ask you a question, you answer. Then you ask me a question, and I answer. We pass the bottle back and forth. If one says pass, then the other play gets another try, and the first player doesn't get to take a swig." Erik's chin moves up, prideful. "Is your power functional?"

"No, it's silent again. Eerily so. After I... shut off—"

"Killed," Erik corrects. A little revenge. "Let us be  _truth_ ful."

Charles quiets, "After I killed those people, it went completely off. Couldn't hear anything. I've probably just exhausted it. It'll return, like it did last time."

 _'Perhaps it surfaces with his madness?'_ "Maybe we can play fair then. You start." Erik sends the bottle over.

"Are you afraid of your power?"

Sharp. Quick. Deadly.

Proof of Charles' intent of not holding back. The idiot begins with subject of fear. The game's purpose is to supply one with information while bewildering the opponent. The metal is cool against Erik's back; cool like he needs to be. In this instant, Erik sets two goals.

1\. His primary aim is more info on Charles Xavier, function being potential blackmail.

2\. He will tell the truth (even if he lets out details), function being establishing trust.

Erik settles. Breathes in. Out.

"I refuse to be reliant on it." Charles sends the bottle over to him and watches him drink; a process that'll be repeated numerous times. Erik puts the action of drinking on automatic to focus on decoding Charles. He casually asks, "Are you afraid of yours?"

"No." Charles drinks with the grace of an aging alcoholic. "How long have you been working for your boss?"

Subject I: childhood.

 _'Does he disclose his objectives on purpose? Or does he aim to piss me off? '_ "Since I was eight," Erik answers. "Where were you when eight?"

"In my parents' private submarine, luxurious and militant." A starkly honest answer. Erik must repay that. Fuck. Charles drinks more, this time. "Where were you?"

"The camps. Factories, today. Last stop Auschwitz, now part of the Body, and yes,  _the_  Body." He remembers the smell. He'd walked through sewers and it couldn't compare. It was one of the reasons Erik first trusted Shaw and his promise of cleanliness—and chocolate, which Erik now associates with his mother's corpse, as his face had been smeared with it (like excrement) when Shaw shot her. "Accidently made a fence pare some Nazis. The boss liked my talents. Why did you leave your parents?"

It takes a while before Charles answers. "They were... disappointed to discover that I was a mutant. More disappointed still when I showed interest in mutant affairs, especially after a former associate of mine started a murder rampage. Do you remember anything from before the camps? Something positive?"

A teeny tiny bit of desperation.

Idiot x2.

"No." The booze burns all the way down. "Who was that associate of yours?"

Charles' expression eats itself. Twists in pain and then blank. "Pass."

"A friend?"

" _Pass_."

"That intimate, huh?"

"Shut up Lehnsherr. She was a friend, now she's not." It is dark inside the carriage, but Erik feels the subtle shift in atmosphere. He's becoming accustomed to Charles' insanity. "Tell me, how did your boss punish you?"

That stung.

Erik swallows fury and bile, repressing and ingesting. "Multiple methods. It's possible for a telepath to transmit delusions, Frost's speciality. Have you ever had your stomach torn open, Charles? Clutching your guts as it spills onto the carpet? Or what about living under the constant threat that if I misbehaved, Frost would make me die a thousand times in my head? And the knowledge that if she did, I wouldn't know afterwards? That was unpleasant. So, Xavier, have you ever despaired?"

"Yes." This time, it isn't a sip. Charles drinks like an old drunkard. "You try to escape?"

Subject II: Adolescence.

"A few times. Last attempt when I was fourteen." Even alcohol can't dim the last image Erik has of Magda. "And you?"

"Escaped when I was sixteen." He chews at his thumb. His eyes dart back and forth, thinking. Erik doesn't need light to know they're bloodshot. Tired. Sad.  _Drunk_. "Dunno how old I am anymore."

"Me neither." Is it the alcohol making him talk? Erik is less influenced. He drank lots of water when Charles wasn't looking.

"...You lose time when on alert. Prisons. Trenches. Some mutant had fucked up the sky, electricity was off, and it was  _so_  dark... No child should have to..." he trails off, ending in an inhale through his nose. His retreats into himself. Erik absorbs the knowledge of Charles being a soldier, and imagines meeting him on a battlefield. They should get back to the questions.

"Why were you imprisoned in that Factory?" Erik asks, more insistent.

Subject III: adultho—

"You're not bad looking, y'know."

Erik's mental evaluation jars.

It occurs to him that this is the end of one game, and the beginning of another.

Charles sways back and forth, "I know... I know what you're trying to do, y'know. Fuck that." He stands up, leaning on the wall. A minor bump in the road makes him fall again. This makes him giggle, unfortunately. Unashamed, he crawls to Erik.

A rational man might've stopped him.

Erik observes, with the same odd fascination he saw on a soldier covered in her exploded lieutenant. Still, he cannot be unprepared. Therefore, Erik removes a layer off the iron walls, shapes them into sharp drills, rotating just behind Charles' head. The telepath doesn't stop until he's right in front of Erik. Then he promptly walks to stand over him for three intense seconds, before promptly sitting down on Erik's lap. It's a sort of intimidation.

Charles' smile widens. There is a strange clarity in those blue eyes.

"The girl, Xavier," Erik says. He returns the smile, but his is sharper. "You'll wake her."

"It's  _Dina_. D'you ignore their names? To categorize 'n dehumanize? To forget?"

"Charles," Erik says pleasantly, "if you don't get off me now I'll lobotomize you."

"I don't think so. That's my speciality, and 'sides, you're at—trac—ted to me." His pronunciation is slow, like speaking to a child. He's testing boundaries. Leaning forward. He wants Erik to look at his lips, slightly parted, waiting to be kissed.

So Erik gives him a kiss.

But instead of his mouth, it's his fist. His knuckles bruise on impact. The spot is bad, because of the teeth gracing him. Bacteria, transferred. One might think it sexual. Worth it though, because Charles will get a new fat lip that'll serve as a reminder of his error whenever he talks.

He stumbles off Erik, returning to and collapsing in his corner. He curses. The drills follow him. Erik considers them for a moment, before reshaping them. Most return to their place in the wall. The rest he compresses and grinds like cheese, resulting in thin wire. He wraps it around Charles neck, becoming a collar Erik can crush Charles' windpipe with. The thought is so lovely it's a lullaby, and Erik finally allows himself some sleep.

It isn't long before he feels vibrations across the floor. Erik's eyes fly open.

The girl stands there, beside Charles. She's healing Charles' swollen lip. Under her glowing hands, it disappears. She does not stop. His face, his arms, his chest, his legs... She does not shy away as she lifts his sweater. How many times has she done it for an old villager, wrinkly, hairy and liver spotted? Healed their aching backs and their blistered hands? Erik watches her till she's done and she looks at him again, threateningly. A watchdog, guarding Charles from him.

Erik falls asleep smiling.

.

.

Beist.

 _Beast_.

After the demolition or constant adjustment within Europe's geography, few places have their original name in the common tongue. Instead, they are named after what they're known for. In Beist's case, growth. According to what little documentation remains, the City of Beist is a little less than 2km2. However,  _Beist_  itself is sprawling organic matter, devouring everything in its path. Villages. Towns. Other cities. One could make the comparison of a morbidly obese person lying down, skin flabs rolling outwards the more it eats.

The architecture has a washed out colour palette. The buildings all look like abandoned warehouses.

The train doors open and two and a half figures exits. The gush of the real world hits them. The station lies in the midst of the sprawling city, from what they can see its only habitants are rats. The doors and windows are bolted shut. There's debris everywhere—some street corners littered with spilled thrash cans, broken glass, scattered ammo. An exploded tank. Battles were conducted here. No wooden houses remain.

"We won't waste time. We're heading straight for my allies." Charles rubs his head, but it is not because of another hangover. That one time passed in silence without any complaints or puke. He'd pointedly been monosyllabic with Erik after that. He looks intimidating in his oversized coat, but carrying Dina piggyback reduces the image. Beist looms over them, and Charles holds Dina a little tighter. She is a merciful girl, and does not make noise.

"When was the last time you visited Beist?" Erik asks.

"Years."

"How long did you stay?"

"A few nights." Charles gives him a sidelong glance, but refuses to continue the conversation.

Erik shrugs. He has the upper hand here. He knows the secret of Beist; the one that no one wishes to talk about; the reason moms scare their kids with  _if you don't behave I'll send you to Beist_. But he stays quiet. It is there again, the fascination of seeing something break. Charles will. Erik is certain.

Soon the landscape changes, and instead of battle worn, the allies become crooked, narrowing because of nature reclaiming lost ground. Charles is determined. "We are following the chalked... woman's lower regions. Help me look."

A truce?

"Ah. Yes," Erik says. And that's when he sees them—white vaginas, everywhere. It'd been humorous if Erik didn't immediately understand the meaning, which he is 110% certain that Charles does not. It leaves a bad aftertaste in his mouth. "...You are aware that people change, yes?"

"Of course I am," Charles snaps, agitated. This is a bad neighbourhood. They've both seen the shadows moving behind bushes and fences, watching them. "I trust  _you_ , don't I?"

Erik struggles with the words. He's used to explaining things in quick, simple terms. This is not simple. "I think you removed something. When you entered my head for the first time, I mean. You took something away and made something else grow instead." He'd felt like a machine for so long—still did, mostly, but there wasn't anything lodged in his ribcage anymore. No clustered wires. No virus. "And I am thankful for that. But... you do realize that traumatic events can change people for the worse, also? Reality filling a person up until it becomes bloated? Beist is a traumatic event in itself."

"We'll find my friends and then we'll see."

The end of the discussion. But if Erik's words have planted doubt, then he's succeeded.

Finally, Charles tells him. "They were soldiers. We served together. Mi and J. Mi was a mutant with x-ray vision, and a physician-turned-human binoculars. J was a guy whose name no one could pronounce. He lost his arm after an accident here, and Mi stayed put to see that it healed. I visited them once. They were doing fine for handicapped scavengers. J spoke about opening a titty bar, hence the graphic design of his logo."

Little after little, the shadows reveal themselves to be kids. This place swarms with them. Mostly girls, aged 5 to 15. Quite a few of them dare ask, "Business?"

"With J, yes," Charles always answers.

Past a concert hall, there lies a two floor house with a spiral staircase in the front. The upper half is freshly painted. A gigantic chalk vagina is painted on the floor beneath. The thrash cans around the place are full of cigarette butts and used condoms. There is no mistaking who owns it.

J.

 _'This is an age of friends with no last names,'_ Erik thinks.

Charles knocks on the door. To his surprise, two children open it. They wear the same outfit, although one is a girl and the other a boy. "Business?" they tonelessly ask.

"I want to speak to J," Charles says.

The children grimace. They take each other's hands tightly and run back into the house. From within, there is a  _clash!_  Then, yelling. Loud footsteps. The yelling begins again, incomprehensible until J storms out, "—fuck d'ya think you—"

He sees Charles.

J is not a pretty man. He has a long, flimsy beard and a face full of grease, spit and breakfast bits. His clothes are shabby. Is that a pair of frilly panties sticking out from his pocket?

"God," J gasps.

"Just Charles, please," Charles says in an attempt at humour.

"I thought you were dead. They said... a messenger... You were in a Factory..."

" _Was_. I got out with help from this man." Charles gestures to Erik. "His name is..." Erik Lehnsherr, pet killer of Shaw, also known as Magneto, "...Ian. A fellow mutant. This little girl is Dina. Unfortunately, her English isn't so good."

J is still struggling to close his mouth. Human language dies and rots on his tongue. Hopefully an insect will fly in and he'll choke on it and die. Finally, J does gesture at them to come in. "This... is a lot to take in. Haven't seen you in years, Charles. But please, come in and sit."

He leads them through a ruby red hall that smells funny with doors on each side (the apartments of J's employees?), until they enter a kitchen slash living room. The luxurious furniture contrasts the general lack of hygiene of the place. J sinks into a couch. Beside him, there is a jar of mayonnaise—or some other yellow substance—with raw sausages swimming in it. Charles sits down on the chair opposite, allowing Dina to sit too. Erik prefers to stand.  _'This is probably a breeding ground for bacteria.'_  He pretends not to see the children in identical clothing.

"Are they yours?" Charles questions.

J raises an eyebrow. "Yeah." To diminish the awkward silence, he puts on a jagged LP. Skip James. Blues roam the house with strange appropriateness.

Erik prefers classical music. Wholly instrumental pieces. Berlioz, Beethoven, and Sibelius when he's in a particular mood, sometimes ornamented with Mozart. Like many lonely men, Erik finds the most comfort in the abstract architecture of Bach. He thinks Charles prefers opera composers from the Romantic era, such as Verdi, with his reactionary and seamless style. Erik also believes some part of Charles likes Wagner.

"Where's Mi?"

The mayonnaise glazed sausage pops as J bites it. "Hung herself." He is very casual about brutality. He has gone from shock to a sort of resigned indifference.

"What?!"

"She got ill. Neurological, I think? She wouldn't tell. Locked herself up in a room and when she came out, she was blind, face fucked up with drooped areas and burst blood vessels. The kids didn't want to go near her. But the Röngten vision remained. Mi left her room even less, and then one day..." he holds an imaginary hose above his head and grimaces. He takes another bite of sausage, chewing while speaking, "People die all the time 'round here. You can't stay in the past. You change or you die."

Charles' hands curl at his knees. Erik raises an eyebrow.

"Speaking of which, have you seen anything of what happened to BERG?"

Charles scowls. Erik quickly deduces that BERG is the organization Charles was part of. He researches his mental database. BERG had conquered a few areas, but rarely operated through combat, preferring infiltration. Erik does not care what the letters stand for, but he's curious of how it ended.

If it'd been Shaw, Erik had remained quiet. This is not Shaw.

"I don't know what happened," he says. "Please, tell me."

Charles holds up a hand. "Dina," he gently says, and in a Russian English mix—"will you play with the other kids, please?" Dina nods. With a gesture from J, a few other kids take her away.

"Boss' fault," J explains to Erik. "Rumours say he had syphilis in the third stage. The insane drive of his that'd built BERG became our  _undergang_. He made all the new recruits march straight into no man's land to conquer a fortress, thinking that the raw spirit of young men and women would surely defeat tanks and bombs. ...The massacre of 50 000 people was finished in a little under an hour. We sorta drifted away from each after that. But you remained, didn't ya, Charles? You should have stayed. Sure, it's been tough, but we're doing alright." J gestures around himself. More children have appeared, watching from the shadows. "We  _live_."

Charles sighs, but sits up a bit straighter. "Speaking of which, where are the women?"

"Women?" J frowns.

"Charles," Erik calls quietly.

"Your... employees. The prostitutes. Streetwalkers. Whores." It pains Charles to talk about it. He ignores Erik. "Unless you employ males? Wouldn't think that from your logo, but I don't know the market, so..."

J leans back. He gets a bottle of moonshine and pops the cap off with one thumb. "Charles," he finally says, "I don't employ adults."

It takes a while to sink in. But like all things, when you first realize them, evidence shows up everywhere.

("Business?" "Business?" Business?")

"You... employ... children."

"Ten and up. Mostly. Rest I take care of until they're old enough to earn their share. I'm not completely deranged, like the ones in West Beist with their snuff films and newborn porn. Christ. Didn't know that was a thing until half a year ago. Supposedly it's, ah, art."

Erik sits motionless. Charles has barely scratched the surface of the underworld. Erik has bathed in its filth for years. Even after Charles...  _fixed_  him, it doesn't surprise him, although perhaps it disgusts him a bit more. Charles  _irks_  him though. There is a line between ignorance and innocence. Erik thinks of Charles as a headmaster (from what he knows of headmasters from popular fiction), only handling the worst individuals in the aftermath of the bad things teachers and classmates having witnessed it firsthand. He understands the need of having a person with no relationship with the case, meaning they can be rational—but every situation is different and needs to be dealt with so. Charles is idealistic and hopeful. Erik is realistic and pessimistic to the point of nihilism.

"You're a monster," Charles finally shouts. He's standing up now. "You take the weakest in the society and you force them to do this? You're destroying them! The psychological damage is disastrous! Most of them will never recover! You're using them for your own personal gain! Where's your humanity? I thought you were my friend..." His voice quiets, and he's shaking all over.

J sits there, taking it all.

"Say something!"

When J finally speaks, his voice is tired. "The reason Mi killed herself was 'cos she saw right through the walls. Saw the kiddies and the men—and sometimes women—on top of 'em, going at it. One day she just snapped. Screamed and shrieked, scaring both kids and customers. She wouldn't stop screaming.  _Monster_ , she called me, kicking and biting.  _Monster_ , again and again. She was so loud. And she wouldn't stop screaming..." J swallows thickly, and then the old absentness is back. "I told her the truth. Held her mouth shut, and I said that if I'm a fucking monster, what's she who uses kiddie prostitution cash to buy drugs? She finally stopped screaming. Breathing, too, late that night. Found her dead the next morning."

There is nothing but revulsion in Charles' expression.

No understanding.

"Listen," J says, a tad more irritated. "I've heard your speech before. But it changes nothing. You want to say it's vile? Disgusting? Awful? Fine. It  _is_. But don't come here and call me a monster. Where would these kids go, huh? You can't enlist in any organization until you're fourteen. The mobs don't want no kids, nor do the real whorehouses. But adults are dying like flies and since people are idiots, they screw as much as they can before vanishing off the face of the Earth. When I first came here the place was full of dead kids, rotting in the sun. You ain't never smelled as bad a smell, I swear. The parents would just let 'em loose here, like animals. Rapists came and went, selecting the ones they wanted, like on a silver platter. I organized the kids. Made sure they were paid. Made sure they knew the tricks so they didn't bleed to death. 'Cos let me tell you, me and Mi had to do some shit your pretty boy ass would've  _ripped_  from to earn money. Now, the nasty pigs ruling the farms outside Beast come in here and party, and we get free supplies. No one dies."

His voice is wobbly. He's drunk too much.

 _'We're in dangerous waters,'_  Erik thought. This isn't interesting anymore. This is just sad. "Charles," he says again, and this time he grabs his shoulder.

Charles reacts at once. "Don't. Don't touch me." He's still remotely sane. He turns to J again, voice dark. "The fate you assign them to is worse than death."

"So go ahead then, Xavier, kill 'em. Kill me." And then he's thrown a gun over to Charles. "C'mon. C'mon! You're always up on your high horse, talking about peacemaking and shit. Well sometimes there's no way out. Sometimes you just gotta survive and kill the person who's trying to kill you. But you never understood that—right up until the last second, when you just twisted their brains and pretended your hands were clean."

"Don't try to tell me you're doing it from them. This is expensive furniture, yes? And booze isn't cheap, either, particularly the fancy sort you've got there."

J grits his teeth, but the fire is going out of him.

"You're not even denying it."

"Fine then! What do you want me to say? That I sell kids for money? That I use said money to buy things that makes me forget? That I use them? Yes, I fucking do! I fucking sell them, and I'm perfectly aware what it entails!"

The confession is enough. Charles can't take it anymore. "I'm gonna be sick." He stumbles out.

Then he realizes: the funny smell in the hall is sex. The children are everywhere. But first now they truly  _register_  in his mind, becoming more than faceless statistics. Everywhere he looks are children with their big, curious,  _dead_  eyes. Oh god, he needs to vomit. He can't go near the thrash because of the things they holds. So he does it in a back garden. He pukes till his lungs are about to burst. He hopes the filth—which he feels has corroded into his flesh—leaves through his mouth. But it's hard to scrape out something that's already under his skin. It takes him a moment to realize, but Erik's standing beside him. Dina is also near, accompanied by a few children.

"We need to get out of here. I can't... I can't... The memories... The smell..."

"Is your power returning?" Erik asks.

But Charles isn't listening. "Dina," he whispers, "Dina please come here." The little girl looks uncertain, but she does step forward, arms reached out so he can lift her up. "Thank you, Dina. Thank god." Then he starts to sprint. Erik keeps up, and he sees Charles' mouth moves. Curious, he listens harder.

"...one... if I can just save one..."

_'Ah. How cliché. And very human.'_

Charles finally slows down. He's shaking.

"I know a place," Erik says. "Abandoned building. No one around. Let's go."

.

.

Back in the house, J puts the volume higher and the vinyl crackles and jars with the force.

He stands still for one minute.

And then something peculiar happens:

J walks from one side to the room, then to the next. He does this a couple of times, until he starts shedding his clothes, one by one. It is done with no haste. Each movement is leisure, and he folds the rags into a neat little pile. The kids that emerge watch him silently. J continues undressing until he's naked. His body holds scars, and there is an infected burn on his left shoulder. He starts to walk around again, back and forth, and forth and back, and then he ends the pattern by walking towards the window. The children bellow pause their games, chubby fingers pointed at J to alert their friends. He gazes at them for another moment.

Then he takes one last circle, heads straight for the window and jumps out, breaking his neck in an efficient, quiet suicide. One more body, rotting in the sun.

Add him to the people Beist has eaten from inside.

.

.

The apartment is nice.

Nice _r_.

Dina is sleeping in a separate bedroom in a bed which consists of a sun lounger stacked with pillows. Charles had held her hand until she slept. There is a hole from a bomb hole in the kitchen area, allowing quite the (un)pleasant view. Other than that, Erik and Charles share a living room. They're on the fifth floor. The building is crooked, but stable. Shaw's vouchers used scanners and to make sure of Erik's own safety as he stayed here once.

"You should eat something," he says.

Charles has not left his corner. "If I eat, it'll just come up." Yes, he had vomited some more after they arrived here last night. Their toilet—slash hole in a walk in closet—stunk of it.

"It'll get better."

"You think I'll forget that?"

"Not forget. But the mind fixes itself. The things it can't handle it wraps into cotton."

"I don't want to be wrapped in cotton."

Charles is, literally, wrapped in several layers of clothes. He complains about cold. Probably the sickness from the time spent in the snow. The body sometimes puts off sickness until one is relaxed, or rather, ready to deal with sickness. Erik can't hold his tongue, "Judging by your reaction this morning, I disagree."

A pause.

"Are you really so emotionless that you think what J is doing is fine?"

The building rattles with telepathy.

Erik's own powers activate in response, metal objects forming and deforming. "I'm not emotionless. It just wasn't the first time I experienced something like this. But of course you wouldn't know that kind of cruelty, having been locked away in a nice place for so long."

"Don't you dare use my past against me." Charles has started shaking again. "You don't know what happened."

"I'm not. I'm merely stating facts."

Erik braces himself for attack. In lieu of a mental invasion, this is an intrusion of another kind.

Lips on his own.

There is the sharp exhale through his nose, and then floating metal rattles and cracks when all the items hit the ground. Charles' hands are tangled in the fabric of Erik's shirt. The callused fingers whiten, holding on tight as if he'd let go, Erik would disappear like steam rising from a pipe.

( _'A factory pipe,'_ Erik thinks.  _'That's were they all end up. Dead Jews and dead mutants._   _Little pieces of me as well. So much death.'_ )

But at the moment, life. Charles is alive and raw against him, projecting a hell hymn of  _wantwantwant_ into Erik's head. He brims with other emotions too. Charles breathes with rage pain fear; fundamental emotions that are so, so hard to imprison. His grip tightens. Erik takes this as an invitation to twist their position around, and suddenly Charles is the one pressed up against the wall.

"That," Erik murmurs, "was not particularly wise."

Oh, how those red rimmed baby blues widen. Charles scowls like a child. He is a child. So idealistic. But he is not infantile—Erik has seen him kill dozens of men in a heartbeat. There is childishness to that, too. He's not used to it. Just like Erik. But unlike Erik, he'd never been forced to be trained in murder.

"You're right," Charles says. Erik's grip loosens. "I wasn't. I'm sorry. I'm not thinking straight, I'm a little agitated. I thought... they were my friends... I thought... wrongly. Nothing is permanent. Everything ends.  _Everything_."

It should feel like a victory, but it doesn't.

"Not everything," Erik says. He holds out a hand. Charles grabs it after reconsidering.

"What is our goal, Erik? I've forgotten."

"Survival."

.

.

The next day, a hoard of children stands outside the door. The message they bring is not a nice one.

"J killed himself 'cos of you. We need a new pimp."

It is very straightforward, and very, very unnerving.

Charles reluctantly agrees to walk them back to find J with a broken neck outside his headquarters. Charles help them bury him. Some of the older kids have said they've regulated business themselves for tonight (this makes Charles ill), but are unsure how long they can keep up appearances. They say other people will come in. Like the old days. The old, bad days.

Erik doesn't think it's their problem. Charles desperately tries to find an answer where there is none.

And then, in the crowd—

A red tail, swishing back and forth. A sign. A warning.

It reminds him of a quote from Dante's The Divine Comedy _; "The devil is not as black as he is painted."_  Is Azazel watching out for him? Or is it to install as much horror as possible? Nevertheless, it may save them.

Erik grabs Charles by the arm. He's already headed for the train tracks. "We have to go."

Everything's rushed— _too_  rushed. He can't think, can't speak...

(But that is how things happen, often. How war happens. A lot of problems are left unsolved.)

"What? Why?"

"Shaw. My old boss. He's here." Quick, fragmented sentences. It's all he can manage. Charles isn't listening. He's thinking about saving everybody again.

"We can't leave. What about the kids, what about D—"

It doesn't matter that they kissed yesterday.

Erik still slams Charles' head against a nearby wall.

.

.

When Charles wakes up, it's because of the Train starting to move. Erik is standing beside the door, lips in a thin line. He's blocking it.

"Where's Dina?" Charles demands.

Erik doesn't answer.

"You left her. You motherfucker... You just... just like that... We haven't done anything, we haven't saved anybody, we  _haven't_ —"

"This isn't fiction, Charles. Welcome to the real world."

"Let me out or I'll kill you."

"You won't."

Charles hisses and takes control. RAGE. It is spelled out in red hot letters in Erik's mind, twisting and curling, somehow managing to open the steel door behind him. Charles tries to force himself out, but all he's stopped by Erik's body, using himself to shield Charles from falling out. He sees Beist slowly becoming further and further away.

The last thing he sees is a view more horrifying than any other:

Shaw. Holding Dina.

Or more specifically, Shaw holding her severed arm, which he does a little wave with.

And then the door finally slams shut, and the unstoppable train travels away. Charles throws himself back, slams his head against the wall, and screams.


	4. // arc I: survival — THE YOUNG

As a child, Elaine feared the dark. As a teen, dependency on others. As an adult, open spaces.

These illusions have been destroyed, in time.

The room holds no indication of how long she's been sitting there. It is no cell. The wallpaper is pastel pink, the bed is queen sized, and the dizzyingly bright light hasn't been turned off even once. "Unnecessary," she mutters—because she always was a fastidious old maid. She imagines herself being a doll in a box, forgotten. She doesn't know where she is or who kidnapped her. That in itself is torture, no matter the luxury.

The door opens.

A man strides in. He's a soldier, she can tell. Young. Plain except a pair of sunglasses and slightly bulky armour. He sits down on the opposite side of the table which her arms are handcuffed to, brushing dust of it. He then dumps a bunch of files down. And then, in the upper corner of it, she sees the photo of...

"I want to see my daughter," she demands, gaze glued on the picture.

"You will," the man says, "but only if you answer our questions." He brings forth a paper from his jacket's inner pocket. "When did her powers manifest?"

"What do you want with that information?"

"We can wait another 48 hours, and repeat this process until you cooperate. Do you want that?"

Reluctantly, she shakes her head. She's a realist.

"Good. Then answer. When did you first become aware of her powers?"

"...Her illness—" What else could one call such a bringer of pain and destruction? "—appeared when her kindergarten class was driven over by a tank. She felt her classmates being smothered, and lashed out. You've seen what happened to the tank, yes? Was used as a picture on the ' _why you should send mutants to the Factories_ ' campaigns."

"So she's hysteric?"

"Hysteric? No, no.  _No_. She was a child. Still is."

"Offspring who has not been subjected to proper discipline often act irrational. Emotional, if you prefer. A danger to others and themselves. It is important that you answer these questions honestly."

"Are you sending her back to the Factories?"

The man shakes his head. "Our people don't own any Factories. We're not that sort." It is almost reassuring, but she hasn't forgotten how long they've kept her here. "Did she use her powers afterwards?"

"Only once. To get out of the Brain."

He smiles. Again with these bits and pieces that prove he's alive. She hates him more for that. Would've been easier if he was stone cold. He has feelings, and a past. Like her. Shit.

(When she was young, she'd liked books. That was how she escaped reality. Her fantasies stopped when she'd sat by her father's deathbed, reading, because she couldn't think of anything to say. He'd reached out to her with a frail hand, softly calling, "Elaine... please,  _Elaine_..." She'd just read harder without actually absorbing the text. He'd died like that, slowly, painfully. Lonely. Afterwards, he'd never touched a book again. Still, she vividly remembers one scene she thought was a nice metaphor for humanity. She can't remember the book title, but it goes something like this: A bunch of prehistoric man apes, having just realized that they can salvage resources; a milestone in evolution. The alpha ape was dragging a carcass up a mountain. Most of the pack wandered around, aimless, not understanding. A few, though, were helping. But the same amount of apes was doing the opposite, trying to get the carcass down again.

Elaine wonders,  _'Which way would you be dragging it, boy?'_ )

The man stops smiling. "Does your family have a history of disorders or drug use?"

"...Drug use."

He writes it down. "What about psychological problems? In your daughter, specifically."

"The world's at war. Of course she's damaged!"

"I meant within your family."

"Well she is... quite sensitive.  _Over_ sensitive. Everything affected her deeply." Images flashes in her head; fighting with her husband, her daughter in the doorway, crying. It'd be better if she'd cried loudly, even screamed. Instead she just stood there with silent, never ending tears. "Let us not talk about it. It's over and done. Irrelevant."

"Hm." The man looks through the files. "I think that about covers it. We'll do some more interviews later."

"Can I see her now? My daughter?"

The man presses a finger to his ear, listening to the earpiece. Then he shrugs. "Boss said sure, why not. Soldiers will be accompanying you."

"Aren't you a soldier?"

"Not that kind of soldier."

This unnerves her. But she must see her child.

The man keeps his word. Soldiers lead her down a corridor. These, however, are obviously tankbred, expressionless and near identical. Everything is very clean and neat. She likes that. When she reaches the destined place, its sheer size overwhelms her.

Tubes and wires hang from the roof. Electricity runs through them, sizzling and humming. They're like a brood of snakes, stretching outwards, on the roof and floor and walls. They become thicker at the end of the gigantesque computer chamber. Devices spin and twist. She stands on an erect platform, allowing a better view, but it is so intense she has to look away for a moment. Where is she? All the flickering lights make her head hurt. But she can't stop staring at this otherworldly place.

And in the midst of it all...

Her baby girl, crying silently. Little Jean.

Or what remains of her, anyway.

Elaine covers her mouth, "Jesus Christ, what have you done with her _... her..._?!"

"They were unnecessary, Mrs. Grey," says a deep, resonant voice. "So we cut them away. Cut, cut, cut."

.

.

_—_ _bang. Bang. Bang._

"Could you stop banging for just one second?" Erik hisses while kneading his forehead. His headache is getting worse. His stomach aches, too, as they didn't bring food.

_Bang._

"Why are you even doing that?"

Charles pauses the relentless self harm. Blood trickles from his eyebrow. "To feel something." Hot air comes out of mouth as he speaks. It is very cold.

They're sitting at opposite ends in the train carriage. It was better when they'd fought. Erik still has slits from where Charles dug his fingernails, looking for bone. He'd screamed his lungs out then. Now his sentences are fragmented and monosyllabic. His heart no longer pumps as loudly—Erik can feel the featherweight metal choker on Charles, feeling his pulse.

"I have come to a conclusion."

Charles is hoarse. His sickness is getting worse. Both the cold and the mental one. Erik dares not interrupt, fearing it will push Charles back into that shell of his.

"I must become stone. Hard, improbable. Mourning the children and villagers will do no good, as people die all the time. Our primary directive is surviving. That's all. But I think... I think I must rest first. I'm very tired."

Erik understands. He, too, feels an exhaustion so deep it makes him feel like he's drowning. Or is it depression? While Charles' emotions seem to vaporize, Erik feels prequel numbness, as if his brain applies anaesthesia to itself before a surgery. His sadness is a tumour. He can't bandage it. He to reach in and rip the core out.

Charles' cough startles him. It reminds Erik of those hours standing vigil; the first time he had ever been so focused on saving one person.

"You're freezing."

"'M fine."

The response is too docile for Erik's liking. He clicks his tongue and walks over, sitting beside Charles to exchange body heat. He expects snark, but receives none. "You shouldn't sleep when you're freezing." Erik tries to come up with something to talk about. "Which classical composer is your favourite?"

Charles falls silent, so silent, in fact, that Erik's tempted to check his pulse.

He mentions some composers. "Beethoven? Mozart? Verdi?"

"I'd like something simpler. Bach, maybe?" Charles mispronounces it. The name is foreign on his tongue.

Erik cringes. "I thought you'd prefer Verdi."

"I did. Before." He leans on Erik. "I'd like to hear him again before I die."

That leaves Erik with a feeling of dread. Despite the exhaustion, it is the most awake he has felt in ages.

.

.

The two main reasons they leave the train are these:

1\. The hunger. Killed dozens of armies and sharper than any sword, making the ribs jut at odd angles and the gut carve inwards.

2\. The atmosphere. The vaporization parallel is true because Erik swears he sees Charles  _shrink_ , bit by bit, eyes gaining a dead quality. He's even hallucinating, swearing he sees wolves running beside the Train.

Most of the stops have been empty, with mere plains in the background. Charles is in no condition to wander. Guilt, hunger, and sickness are eating him. "I can't feel my legs," he whispers once, in a half lucid state. Shouting at the passengers in the other carriages will do no good. Erik tried and received no answer. Desperation forces them to leave the Train at the first good stop. And it isn't good.

A Fort. Big, new,  _intimidating_. But it's a mere 200m from the station—and the construction is made of metal. Light shines from the glass between the heavy gauged steel framing. Erik feels movement inside, feels people. Will they let them in?

Charles' weight is heavy on his shoulders. The last time he spoke was hours ago.

Ice and water sloshes under his shoes. He's not certain which season it is. In many ways, this feels like a road to Hell.  _'But we've been there already.'_  To take his mind off the upcoming issue, he tries to recall the religious locations for the afterlife, as sort of a mental exercise. Hell. Heaven. Purgatory. Limbo.

The entrance is one designed for militaristic vehicles. There is a door on the side though, with a microphone and loudspeakers, which a voice comes out of as soon as Erik's near enough. At least he didn't need to knock.

 **Who are you?**  says the robotic voice. Artificial intelligence is rarely in use because of the economical strain and required computer specialists. The people on the other side must have good resources.

Erik clicks his tongue. Negotiation is Charles' speciality, not his. "Travellers. We're hungry and my friend is very weak. Our property was stolen. We need help." His pleas comes out robotic, too, so he tries harder, " _Please_. My friend he's... he's  _dying_ , and... and I don't know what to do."

Is that true emotions? Or fabricated? It is so hard to tell the difference.

There is a pause.

Then the door opens. It reveals a bespectacled teenager with hair like a giant black cloud that she'd probably given up on controlling ages ago. "Hello. Welcome to Haven. My name is Olivie. Oli for short." She has a French accent, but it tells little of her roots. "I'll be guiding you to your main hall, where we do the regular check ups."

He had expected more guards, but elects not to mention it. The walls are polished, but the militaristic metal soothes him in lieu of Shaw's marble halls, and the futuristic technology he feels moving beneath them puzzles him. It doesn't take long before they reach the check ups section. A lot of people expect them. Teens, mostly. Despite looking welcoming, they wear guns. Oli help him with Charles, who's unconscious by now.

"This is the headquarters of Organization 7Q. Welcome," says a scarred boy who smells strongly of incense. Odd how they demonstrate the broad spectrum of youth—one pretty and naïve, the other battle worn and cold. Most of the people here seem to belong to one group or the other. Their varying skin colour has nothing to do with it. It's all about chance. "We don't get a lot of visitors, so we'll have to do the required scan."

Of course.

The problem is that Erik's— _Magneto's_ —face will immediately be recognized by computers. But it's too late to turn back, and even if they shoot Erik, Charles will probably remain alive. The thought is oddly comforting. At least then one of them could fulfil the goal of survival. They fasten a bulky digital reader to his face. It is done with surprising gentleness and words of comfort. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Charles receive the same treatment.

**Facial scan beginning at 0%**

It happens surprisingly fast. They're talking to him, but he isn't listening. His muscles stiffen in preparation for the imminent battle.

**Facial scan 100% complete.**

He awaits an alarm. Nothing happens.

Relief dawns on him like cool water, only to be crushed a second later.

**Warning: an anomaly has been detected.**

"Aw shit. Problem with everything being technological is that nothing..."

The scarred boy pauses. Looks up the screen, then down again. Calmly, he does an intricate gesture with three fingers, and then every gun in the room is on him. Erik has been in this situation before. In contrast, this is young people, and the situation previous had been full of old villagers.

**Target identified as** **_Magneto_ ** **. Danger level: extremely high. Kill on sight.**

It then proceeds to share the numerous bounties, in a quieter volume, but all the teens are too frozen to react.

And then they're shooting—

(Spending time with Charles was like entering a world that blurred his past one beyond recognition. But Erik recalls it now. Parts of it, anyway. Despite working in shadows, he'd earned a reputation as someone who'd messed with the gears behind the biggest conflicts in recent history; massacres, coups, major battles... Quite a feat when his boss was near unknown. However, one musn't dwell on the past.)

—and he has all their bullets in his grasp, easily as nothing. He felt the bullets in their guns before they pulled the safety off.

Erik grits his teeth. What would've been easy before is hard now, because he  _feels_  them—a bullet inside a gun inside a hand, warm and trembling. Whatever Charles did inside his head unlocked his empathy. Fuck. The bullets tremble in the air, because even his powers are unstable. A riddle he'd heard long ago answered why: what is deadlier than hate and flows without limit? The answer was boredom. Erik had not cared before. He hadn't cared enough to use his power, even, preferring using his hands, if not just to spite Shawn.

Charles wouldn't like waking up to a bloodbath. Charles wouldn't like a lot of things.

Erik looks towards him. A grave mistake. The scarred boy notices it—and as a test, he slowly moves his guns towards Charles' unconscious body. The others follow his lead.

Erik's reaction is immediate.

The walls surrounding him suddenly  _bends_ , bulks appearing everywhere at the extreme emission of power. The sound is as if you slammed a hammer on every metal surface in the main hall. Those kids are going to shoot both him and Charles, which makes them kids no longer, just obstacles. Metal stakes push themselves out of the wall, ready to pierce every living thing in the room. Empathy is forgotten.

Until Charles pauses them.

He's standing up and trembling.

Erik swears he hears him sigh, mentally.

 _I am Professor X. Some of you might not know me or remember, but I saved this organization in the Netherlands, ages ago. You have seen what I can do to your enemies. Do not make me do the same to you. Magneto is my ally. He's loyal to me._ (Erik thinks about how much easier this situation would've been if Charles had just said this in the beginning.) _We have travelled far. Consider it repayment to shelter us for a moment before we'll travel away, I am not well at the m—_

And then the voice grates, and Charles falls. The grip loosens and Erik regains control. He reacts in a second, bending the floor tiles to his will, grabbing hold of Charles to lessen the fall. He then sprints over to him, making the bullets scatter. "Charles," he mumbles, " _Charles_." Oli sits nearby, gaping.

The scarred boy lifts his gun. "Shot," he orders. A tremble moves through the crowd.

"Stop, my dear children."

Every single teenager in the room do as commanded. A shadow moves forth, revealing the father of the hoarse voice—an ugly little man, wearing a black cloak and a priest collar.

"Do not hurt them. These men are apostates, sent here on a mission. Let us help them, as Professor X once did with us." He bends his wrinkly crooked fingers together, grinning a toothless grin. "Come now. Don't be shy. Take Professor X to his room. I will handle Magneto, yes yes  _yes_."

.

.

Erik does not rest. Does not blink.

Instead he makes certain Charles is taken properly care of, eyes that of a wary watchdog. It takes quite some time before Father Cornelius—the name of the priest—can gain his whole attention.

"I do apologize for the children's reactions," is one of the first things he says, "but they are right to be paranoid. They have been at war all their life. That being said, I also understood your reaction. I understood why you'd kill them."

Erik is sick of understanding. He watches Father Cornelius out of the corner of his eye. They're walking through a long hall, near enough Charles' room so that Erik can still feel his heartbeat.

"I hope you'll find rest here. We are what remains of Organization 7Q—and so, most are here are disabled in one way or another. Our base is a haven, or little Heaven, if I may say so. A resting place."

"I have been to Hell, Father." The village. "Saw them burn. And I've seen Limbo, too." Beist. "This is not Heaven, this is Purgatory. Heaven is dead. Gates are closed. Do you even remember what 7Q stands for?"

Father Cornelius shrugs. "Nobody cares what anything stands for. They care about a roof over their head and a hot meal once a day, and who can blame them for that? In flesh and spirit, they are members of 7Q. That's all they have left, now. Loyalty. Order. Faith—in what, matters not. Better a god than a general."

"I don't like it," Erik intervened. "Makes people into numbers."

"Oh? I thought you, responsible of thousands of deaths, would use a generalization technique."

"Did. I changed."

"How so?"

"I woke up."

"But you remember everything you did."

Erik's jaw sets. "Most of it." The past has become a blur in the corner of his eye.

"Not all, then," Father Cornelius says. "But I hope you  _understand_  the philosophy, here. We try not to engage with the outside world anymore. I won't ask you anymore questions, I promise. Old habits. I am an old man. The children would have behaved differently."

"They're not children."

"They were too young to join the war, and too old to be lumps with arms, legs and an appetitive too big for the parents to stifle. They had established connections, and so, most of them weren't sold."

"I think," Erik says after a pause, "that awareness was a mistake in nature. A mutation gone wrong. Like dinosaurs, getting too big. Or deer with too big antlers. That's why humankind is growing extinct as of late. It was only a matter of time after the one monkey said to the other monkey,  _you are weaker than me_ ,  _you are different than me_ , or  _you have something I want—and therefore I will kill you_. Perhaps this is how it should be."

"So you don't look upon life as something positive?"

Erik shrugs.

Father Cornelius leads him to a different set of quarters, one with rooms akin to classrooms (which he has never seen, only read about). Erik sees teenagers teaching each other, talking to each other, establishing group dynamics. Little adults. They pass quarters specified to shooting, and other for art. Quarters for the old. Quarters for the insane. This is a thriving environment, but also very quiet. Erik imagines Haven as a small ecosystem hidden beneath a grotesquely obese and dying person's (the world) skin flab. He thinks about Shaw.

"You could stay here, you know. We don't have anyone your age. Might be refreshing."

"Our goal was survival."

"Who...?" Father Cornelius catches up. "Would staying here not complete that goal?"

Erik's lips thin. "Charles has awakened. I must see him."

.

.

He's pretending to be asleep. That, or he simply does not care for Erik's pretence.

The room is painted baby blue—intensely baby blue. For Erik, the colour somehow produces a feeling of dread. Erik sits on a chair in the same colour, and he licks his lips, nervous, oh so dreadfully nervous.

Charles begins speaking, "You know when you projected a memory to me to stop me from entering your mind? After the initial shock, I wondered... still do... what the bloody fuck was that?" Even the curse word is said tonelessly.

"Frost, Emma. She's the one who taught me it. Using magnetism, I—"

"No. I'm talking of the memory itself. Who was she?"

"Matha, her name was. Gypsy. Easy prey. A soldier bragged he'd brought her for a mouldy loaf of bread. We met in the training section by a mistake when a guard thought me one of the other children. I was fourteen, and she didn't know her age. Young and foolish as we were, we decided to escape. Our plan went bad." Erik closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them, demons stare out. "Shaw did not just kill her to set an example. He liked to paint himself as a God among his subjects. When he was near, it meant peace and gifts. He stopped several horrible, staged occurrences. They trusted him as a kind guard. Martha listened to him too. Standing there, in front of us, he asked,  _Do you want to know what sort of creature little Erik is?_  He told her. Scared of me, she ran, rounding a corner, and was peppered with bullets. You couldn't recognize the corpse afterwards. Too messy." The meat grinder metaphor pops up in his head again. Shaw had been the first to voice it. " _Gott_ ," Erik says, remembering.

Charles sits up. "It surprised me, at first. You have no good memories."

"If so I don't remember them. I guess hatred is just a part of my personality, yes?"

"No. More like a mechanism. I don't know if it's a natural construction, though."

"They want us to stay," Erik says, changing topic. "Or at least, Father Cornelius said so. Old priest guy. Seems trustable."

"I know. I heard your conversation."

Erik frowns, "Has your telepathy stabilized already?"

"I'm not certain." Charles chews on his thumb. "I'm not sure it'll ever—stabilize, I mean. Not that it matters. Us staying. We won't be, no matter if we'd wanted to or not."

"What do you mean?"

"She's coming."

"Who?" Erik asks, and his frown deepens.

"Feel."

"Feel what?"

Charles pauses. Then he drawls, "Let go of the bed Erik. I'm  _fine_." Erik's faces heats up, but he does as commanded. "Look up," Charles continues. "Up, up, up. Or feel up. Whatever."

Erik does, and finds the outline of a huge flying iron ship.

Coming straight towards them.

"Scheiße."

Charles agrees.

.

.

**South wall breached. I repeat: south wall breached.**

Every screen shows the words and every loudspeaker voice them.

The older teens take command, herding the others to the exits like sheep. Erik and Charles move among them, the latter leading on the former.

**Southwest wall breached. I repeat: southwest wall breached.**

"The ship is specialized to enter great fortresses like this one. Originally made to breach Factories. First that did so, actually," Charles lectures him. "I've read about these. Common among the Brotherhood's forces."

The Brotherhood.

"I used to trade weapons to them," Erik recalls. "Like many others."

"The Brotherhood isn't like many other organizations. They're the  _winning_  one. And it's mutants only. Specifying it like that... some sick branch of National Socialism, or something."

"Quiet!" someone yells, cutting the conversation short.

Erik and Charles follow the crowd.

"We need to get out of here," Charles finally whispers. "Out of this box."

"Alright," Erik says. There are so many people than slipping unseen into a room isn't too hard. Getting out of there, for Erik, is beyond easy.

A tunnel opens up.

The landscape outside is covered by snow.

Erik feels the ship breach another wall.

"We could hide, and go back into the ruins afterwards—because they're obviously not here for the fortress. Wait for the Train." Surprisingly, it's Charles suggesting this, tiredly. He was serious when he'd said he would care less, back on the Train.

Erik imagines himself as a teacher, or a scavenger. It reminds him of his previous life.

His  _sleeping_  one.

"I think it's time we find a new common goal," Erik says. "A new objective other than surviving."

"What do you have in mind?" Charles asks, blasé. But it's  _too_  blasé. Forced.

"I think we need to resurrect  _rage_. Instead of not giving up... How would you like to get revenge? A revenge on all those who harm innocents."

"Revenge," Charles repeats. He sees the ship in the distance, slamming itself into the fortress. Then: "Alert them."

Erik grins so hard his teeth hurt. He raises his arms.

The ship  _shudders_.

Charles moves closer to Erik.

 _General Darkholme_ , he screams.

"General Darkholme?" Erik repeats, still sending waves towards the ship.

It has stilled now—still in the air, as if waiting for something. Waiting, or thinking.

Charles looks a bit sullen, and says, "Otherwise known as my little sister."

There is no more room for conversation, again, because the ship is headed their way. It is smaller than one would imagine, but makes up for it with an impressive drilling tool up front. It lands quite impressively right in front of them. The two men do not falter.

They raise their arms up to shield their eyes, but are still blended by bright, white light.


	5. // arc II: resurrecting vehemence — THE GENERAL

YOU LIVE BY THE MYTHS OF IMMORTALITY, AND YOUR MYTHS ARE NOT SAFE

— Robbert Montgomery

.

.

"God is cruel," Charles says, as of yet blinded, but unfaltering.

The statement brings back memories—the small town, the big city, the closed off facility... All the same. Their journey through a ruined Europe had awoken something in Erik, and killed something in Charles. Erik thinks about futility. "You are saying this because of what we have experienced," he deduces.

"No, I'm saying this because I have to see my sister again." He sighs like he's off to meet Satan.

Erik frowns.

The ship's platform lowers into the snow, sending a small avalanche their way. Getting used to the light is near impossible for some who have lived so long in darkness. Erik still holds a hand in front of his face. At the top of the platform, there's the shape of a woman. Behind her, giant searchlights.

And when she steps down the platform, away from blinding light...

Blue skin.

It is  _here_  it clicks, because although Erik's memory is full of gaping holes leaking gore and pus, he could have recognized her anywhere. "Mystique." Raven Darkholme. The Mystique.  _The_  General. A Destroyer of worlds, known as the most ruthless leader in the Brotherhood since the last one perished. Erik thinks he had a finger in that death, but doesn't remember.

On her head... A helmet. The voids in his head twist and enlarge.

"Magneto," she greets neutrally, walking towards him, ignoring Charles' existence for the moment. Her appearance has not changed. She still lacks 3 fingers, for an example. Erik doesn't quite know what to expect—but the fist to the face isn't that bad, really, although it does make his teeth rattle. He stumbles backwards, holding his swelling cheek. It'll be black and blue come morning. Lots of people are angry at him. He doesn't care to explain himself anymore, expecting Mystique to continue beating him, which she does not.

"Traitor," she spits.

That...

That he didn't expect. Spitting a mouthful of blood, he asks, "What?"

"Do you two know each other already?" Charles asks pleasantly. Despite his seemingly lack of the previous exhaustion and illness, the tension is so thick one could slice through it. Here lurks unfinished business. Erik hopes said business won't cost his head.

"Charles," Mystique begins, toneless, "what is your relationship with this person?"

"He's a friend," Charles answers, "and a valuable ally. Although he did not say he knew the fearsome General Darkholme. It must've slipped his mind." He coughs. "But truly, sister dear, he's proven quite useful in my escape."

"Yes. I heard you were captured after the mass murder." Mystique looks him over. In contrast to her thick military uniform, Charles is dressed in rags. "You look like shit."

"Thank you. What is your business with Haven?"

"The rumours said it was an underage sex cult."

"You don't care about that."

The jab causes no other reaction but a slight scowl. "The location of the fortress is  _also_  excellent for further use, yes. Its habitants are said to be trained, but their skills are rotting within walls instead of used on the battlefield, something we cannot have when our race is about to go extinct."

"They are mostly human, you know," Charles says. "A good sixty percent. What will you do with the rest of them?"

"A game of chess isn't complete without pawns in its front lines. The two of you should be well aware of that." Charles' expression twists, but Mystique remains expressionless. "The landscape has changed. I'm not an idealist, I'm realistic. To end this war, we have to give everything in a final push. There have been so many armies that have fallen because of madness, incompetence or simple backstabbing. I talk to you now, in person—instead of shooting you down like my officers advised me to do—because I want to know if you're in or not, Xavier. We could use a telepath on your level, but you'd have to operate under my command, and follow orders."

"And what about Erik?"

The three of them stand there in the snow, and Erik wishes for pelting rain to chase off the silence.

"Can you control him?"

"Yes." A heartbeat passes. "But we elected to survive, and to survive together."

Together they've outlived several communities and come to the conclusion that there is always something nasty going on behind locked doors. The Brotherhood is no exception, even if their ways are  _openly_  violent. Charles takes a long stride towards Erik, breaking the perfect triangle, proving that it is them against her. It produces a strange heat in Erik. And as he is fonder of visualising than abstract cognitive methods, imagines himself folding the heat inwards and inwards until there is nothing more to feel.

_'I am sick with you.'_

Mystique watches them.

"...Fine then. Follow me."

She makes a gesture with her hand. Erik and Charles share a glance before they step onto the platform. Now that the light no longer point at them, but rather surveying the area for targets, Erik becomes aware of the surprising mass of soldiers inside the ship. Mystique whispers something to a soldier as she passes.

It is when finally inside that Erik's heart starts to pick up speed.

Where it previously was squished into a steady, somewhat forced beat, his instincts are beginning to register conscious  _and_  subconscious threats all around them, in particular the latter. Because he  _is_  used to hatred, but not in the ancient sulphur scented looks Mystique are giving him. This is personal. He can't remember why. He  **can't**. It is beginning to become a serious problem, this amnesia. Erik's world is a jigsaw puzzle, except that someone has spilled water on it so that the pieces bulged and curled in on themselves—truly fucking it up beyond recognition. Clumsily, he mentally tries to reach out to Charles, but receives no response. Fucker is either ignoring him or his power's gone again. His gaze is set on his sister, making certain not to fall behind.

"You have a lot of nerve, coming back here," she says to Erik, sneering like she's missed her rabies shot.

"I still don't know what you're talking about," Erik says.

"Fuck you." Her fingers are four crescent moons into her palms.

Charles raises an eyebrow, but chooses not to comment on it.

The soldiers behind them do not march. They move quickly and deadly. Behind them, a mass of near identical faces, eyes the colour of hatred. Erik doesn't see a difference anymore. "We moved the new kids onto Block 44, General," a schmo jogs forth and tells her. "Hein will begin the sequences."

"Good."

Two doors slide open, revealing the war room. High tech maps, computers and television screens. At the table there exist mutants of both sexes, mostly young, but older than the soldiers outside. The war room shines like wet pavement in shades of black and grey. On the very far side, the oldest sits, a white man with a thin neck with blue and red veins, at least 50 in shoe size, stirring in a beer glass with what appears to be coffee. He sits like only an old tired man can sit—and he's the only one who watches Erik with emotion parallel to Mystique's.

Unnerved, Erik surveys the room instinctively, and jerks when he sees the wide array of other war ships situated around this one. When he jerks, one of the soldiers almost pulls the trigger and Erik's brains almost slide down the nearby wall. "You have an army," he observes.

"I told you: we are preparing one last attack," Mystique says.

Erik and Charles' entrance to the room has shaken up a lot of the members of the room. Mystique ignores the bewilderment and remains stoic.

"I am not inviting you here because of our relations. I am not inviting you here because I have forgiven anything, not any of you two shitheads. I set the cause higher than I set myself. Now, in front of an audience... Do you swear to help the cause? To end the war?"

 _'Our goal was survival, though,'_  Erik thinks. "I don't—"

" **Shut up**. Xavier?"

Charles clicks his tongue. "My demand still stands, despite my capture. I don't want to do this shit from afar. We're not inactive overlords, nor have we or will we watch from the sideline, fading into the background. We have been there. We have seen it. We have felt it."

Tasted it.  _'Miasma,'_  Erik thinks.  _'Dead air.'_  The gritty texture of it.

"So you still refuse to kill people? No. We've reached beyond that point. Our spies told of the people you left in that small town near the Russian border. Congratulations, brother. You've grown up." Charles closes his eyes. Technically, that wasn't Charles; it was his madness surfacing. Maybe Mystique doesn't know. Maybe Mystique doesn't have to know. She says, "Well, I don't have any problem sending  _you_  headfirst out into the battlefield Lehnsherr."

"Where are we attacking?" Charles asks, pleasantness returning, voice like velvet. There are razors underneath the velvet.

"That's above your security clearance. For now, I will consult with my advisors. I'm certain you're both tired after the journey." She's sneering, and commands someone unimportant to take them to the guest rooms. Judging from her mood, it is wise to piss off. Erik and Charles obediently follow the scout.

"Probably pay back from when we were children. She'd always get commanded out of the room when mother and father were discussing adult business. Now it's my turn."

Erik looks at him, hard.

Charles turns serious. "No, it's not back yet. I haven't... tried, but I don't want to."

The guest rooms must've belonged to someone important. Not luxurious by any stretch of the imagination, militaristic, matching Erik's tastes disturbingly much. The interior as well as exterior is made almost entirely out of metal. He touches it with his mind and gasps as he feels his own fingerprints. The evidence is clear: he has been here before. But when?

Charles says, "It's nice with a clean bathroom, yes, but it's not that of a big deal." He walks around, noting that there are two beds, sizing them up. Erik can tell that he's thinking of something else. "How many days since we've seen a clean toilet, Erik?"

_How many cameras are there in this room?_

The telepathic demand hits him and he doesn't flinch. "Forty, I believe?" 43, to be specific, but his mind is too muddled to word it precisely. Telepathically Erik's words are those of a drowning man, rushed and meddled together and not quite audible.

_I thought as much. This room hasn't been used in a long time—must be specialized for interrogations, don't you think? O for testing new allies? I have qualms about it, and I would have preferred to converse with you in peace. Tactics, you know. And I'd like to know how you pissed off my sister so well; she doesn't go around punching people without reason. Not that hard, anyway..._

Erik hopes the  **?** he sends is enough.

 _Don't shout. But yes, I understand that you're not consciously aware of why._ Charles sits down on the bed, yawning. "Too bad you're not a very conversational person, Lehnsherr. I would've liked to discuss strategy, but you're radiating tension. That can't be healthy. I doubt you could be tense  _and_  talk at the same time."  _Sorry dear, playing a role here. Technically, I could administer a role for you as well, instructing you how to behave and what to say, but you wouldn't have a say in it, and I don't think you'd like that, hm..._

Erik stares at him, walking closer.

 _You have an idea,_  Charles smoothly projects.  _But the idea requires words. Fuck, Erik, you really should learn—_

Erik kisses him.

It isn't pretty. In fact, Erik's breath smells like something crawled down his throat and died, lips cracked, and then there's the roughness by a careless—if not inexperienced—lover. He lacks both finesse and enthusiasm, movements steeled. Erik has no interest deepening the kiss, or kiss at all. It is a means to an end. It is also very unlike the hell hymn of a makeout session they shared in the apartment in Beist, among mislaid tiles, bomb holes and scabs of flaking spray paint bribing the rust for another few years.

Pristinely kills sensuality.

_Are you thinking with your cock and molesting me?_

"No to both," Erik whispers near his ear. "But there are no cameras in the shower."

Charles pauses. Raises an eyebrow. He doesn't project anything, but his expression says it all.

Erik's blood streams south. "What are you smirking about?" he asks out loud.

"I'm not smirking," Charles smirks.

Erik heads for the bathroom. Charles follows, docile. Catlike. The bathroom is of the same material as the rest of the guestroom (/interrogation room). Erik knows that if he laid his finger against the mirror, there would be no space between his finger and its reflection—as in there's a high chance someone else standing behind it, watching. He isn't a shy teenager, and peels off his sweater and jeans, socks, underwear. The sterility forces a confrontation with the smell of sweat and smoke; their own smell. Tut tut. There are worse things.

Charles leans against the doorway, fully dressed, looking pleased. "Thank you for the strip tease," he says.

Erik's lip curls above his teeth, showing full rows. Only one way to describe it: shit eating. English—such an expressive language. "Join me," Erik says, but it comes out a little awkward, a little too harsh, because sensuality's not his strong suit. He steps into the shower, turns it on. Lukewarm water. He doesn't mind. The feeling of filth sliding off him is almost sad because he's gotten so used to a symbiosis with microorganisms there aren't yet names for. The shower's glass walls are fogged.

Soon, there are hands on his back, a cocktail of war and other instincts making him flinch. Charles' fingers, short and somewhat stubby. Erik sees them out of the corner of his eye and thinks of splayed fish on ice.

Erik inhales.

Exhales.

Slams Charles into the wall under him, trapping him, pressing against him, the two of them a mishmash of thin white bodies like Auschwitz. This constant stream of consciousness is unwelcome. Erik turns the heat up.

"Oh my. Was this an excuse to fuck me?"

The individual(s) behind the mirror—Erik imagines a horde of them, shoulder to shoulder, hollow eyed and staring—will only see Erik's back. "Will your sister kill us?" he asks, grinning that grin with zero traces of humour. "Use your mouth, please."

"Christ, what a command," Charles drawls. "But no, I don't think so. My power was too weak to dive into her mind without her noticing, as I practised on her once upon a time and increased her sensitivity. I don't know what her deal with you is. But there is something else than just  _me_  stopping her from putting a knife in your forehead. Her hatred wasn't... wasn't impersonal or mechanical. Felt like a floating chunk of ice, where only ten percent is visible." His mastery over facial expressions is admirable, but not perfect, as he wears a blank façade in lieu of more likely emotion. Erik can see that he is hiding his true response. "You must have done something to hurt her immensely."

"I cannot remember what."

It is either doubt or water that makes him squint. "Hm. Does it even concern you that someone has meddled with and or reprogrammed your mind?"

"Wouldn't a reprogramming hinder such a response?"

"It is hard consorting with someone who is not certain if they're being controlled or not," Charles states. "We're supposed to discuss tactics."

"You must have some faith in me. You could have had Darkholme shoot me, iceberg metaphor or not." For a moment there is only the sound of drizzling water. Erik cracks his shoulder up, improvising some movement akin to that of a makeout.

Charles winks at him. "If not only for your delicious body. ...Ok, that might be stretching the imagination a little bit yes, seeing how you are skin and bones just like me, but you do have a nice ass." He proceeds to grab the meat of said ass. "Um, improvisation?"

Erik ignores that  _and_  the twitch of his growing arousal. "I do understand your idea that the two of us must fight actively instead, which is fine because I'm sick of being a behind the scenes person anyhow, but sending Level 4 mutants into the battlefield headfirst is not something a decent general would do. And Mystique has managed quite well, judging by the ships located behind her on the screens. I do not think she wants either of us dead so soon. There must be a catch."

"Like what?"

Erik leans down near Charles' ear, simultaneously pressing against him. Some distant part of his mind registers that Charles is also hard. "A logical hypothesis is that she will send soldiers there beforehand, who will die, but weaken the lines a little bit. It gives the two of us the upper hand through surprise. But you don't more people to die, do we? Therefore it'd be logical to go together, or first. Or alone."

"She wouldn't send us alone. That's not my Raven. We will tell her that we'll only go together—in the morning." Erik nods. Charles sighs. Turns silent. "Well. I'm glad we came to a conclusion. Leaves more time to..." His cognitive wheels roll and out of a sudden he's set his sight on snogging Erik half to death.

Erik's logical senses say their respective goodbyes, go on vacation and end up somewhere in interstellar space.

The hand on ass is moving upwards, hooking around his shoulder. Erik instinctively grinds against him, sneaks a hand in between their bodies to jerk Charles off. To Charles' surprise—who probably pictured himself as the sex teacher with a honeyed voice and endless patience—the pace and hold are expertly conducted. "You've done this before."

"I can't remember," Erik breathes.

"Of course not." Regardless, Charles continues kissing him, hand making its way into Erik's hair. Longer, now.  _Can't say I miss the_   _buzz cut, darling._ His grip is tight, rough. No romance in the air. Just cold seduction and sex without content.

The desire withers and flakes, disordered, up and down like haywire statistics. Nausea starts inside and latches onto Erik's bloodstream. Accompanying the nausea there are memories exposing the great gray ritual of existence and enlightening madness—Mad Charles' world essentially, but coloured with Erik's recollections. Especially ones remembered recently, concreted with him wording them; Magda's meaningless vivisection and the civilians trapped in the bunker. The memories all spring forth whenever Erik tries to establish normal human relations. A Thanatos complex designed to mix in with id... Erotic death...

(All while jerking Charles off.)

This is not healthy. This is not sensible. This is not fair. However, it's difficult to latch onto the reality of his condition when what Charles offers is so suggestive, despite it being disturbing in the context.

_'No.'_

(Charles gives a wet kiss to Erik's chin—which Erik imagines is grimy and sweaty and greasy  _inside_  because the water only washes the surface—and bites with kitten teeth, no noticeable damage, but the marks he makes on Erik's neck though, those draw blood. Territorial? Or just aggressive? Erik wonders if it's hard to be sex incarnate when the shower washes away the dirt, although Charles has no issues with it—)

_'No.'_

(—because he moans sweetly and says Erik tastes like  _more_ , please,  _yes, let's move it to the bed ok?_  And Erik complies without words, he never was too good with them, and he gets this idea that he was born still in an acid and confused womb of a world, screaming and covered in filth. Erik is just about to make his way out of a shower not caring if anybody's watching when—)

_'NO!'_

Charles wrenches himself off. "The first word you learnt to project clearly,  _screamingly_  clear, and it has to be now, has to be that word." Yet  **no**  is the word that shows something is alive with a consciousness. "What is it? Don't you want this?"

Erik's mouth does an odd thing, lips twisting, closed as with a zipper or glue.

 _Jesus, you're trying to break your mind locks,_  Charles projects, probably out of habit. A rhetorical observation.

He sneers, and shakes his head. Erik stares right at— _through_ ,  **drilling** —Charles, and asks, "Do you need someone or do you need me?"

Charles is still panting, chest rising and falling. At last the wound of confusion—mind cut open—shields itself with sardonicism, and when that doesn't work the wound closes itself with chagrin. Charles scowls. Erik thinks it's getting cooler in there, and then realizes that the water is turning lukewarm, reminding them of its presence, perhaps as a warning masquerading as simple logic. They've been in the shower for too long. The cool water is killing Erik's arousal.

Charles is shivering, but doesn't blink.

What an absurd situation.

"Do you think this is about love, you fucking idiot?"

"Of course not," Erik hisses, offended at the mention of a fairy tale concept, or more scientifically a mix of hormones romanticized but easily defeated. "I'm sick of you  _using_  me as if I were a dog to be commanded around. This alliance of ours will never work if you continue treating me like a fool. Don't let your own insecurities—especially considering  _your_  condition—drag me down with you." Erik doesn't say that he associates death with familiarity. Is the irritation of product of it, or another programming. "If you're in dire need of a dildo I'm certain your sister can recommend something." Oh, that is low, but he doesn't care. Brimming with unused energy and disorientation (somewhere in him someone screams  _what the hell is going on?_ ), he steps out of the shower, grabs a bathrobe and heads towards the bed.

To sleep.

To forget, to smother, to die—for a little while. Better than an orgasm as sleep doesn't require handiwork. The bed is decently comfortable. He strips off the robe, turns off the light and prepares to meet Death. It isn't long before he hears footsteps.

"You are so  _ugly_."

Erik's eyes turn into slits. In the darkness, half his face is shadowed. He sits up, and slowly smiles.

Grins.

Charles flinches as if the expression sickens him. He tries and fails to copy it, taking a warrior stand in the doorway. "I'm not talking about your appearance. Your mind is a cesspool, and I have lived with it without ever complaining—until you started spurting that garbage on me just now. What the fuck was that?"

"What's ugly is here," Erik responds, "is the person torturing himself hope. Look in the mirror, Xavier. Do you see a halo above your head, I wonder? Are you a saint, leading the world into an era of peace? Shall I follow you unconditionally?"

"Shut up." Charles is still shaking. From cold, perhaps?

"Go to sleep. Let's  _rest_."

.

.

He knows it's a dream before he opens his eyes. In the dream, of course.

Its status as a nightmare or a good dream—is he capable of good dreams?—remains undecided as although his emotions feel flat, he's not scared. What surrounds him is a void, a hole in the world, without colour, smell or taste. He starts to walk. To his surprise, he hears something.

There is noise, loudening the further he walks into the void. At first it sounded like a constant sound with only small but repeating variables, but as he approaches, he hears instruments. Violins, first, repeating two shrill notes. And a piano, in tune with the violins. Other noises, too, less musical. An orchestra of things that go bump in the night. Then: a plangent cello lavishly swelling amid new György Ligeti style piano jabs and snatches of soprano opera singing like Èdith Piaf trapped down a well. If he should analyze the looping orchestra, it must derive from a spring motor driven acoustical, nonelectronic gramophone with a disc stuck on loop. Sinister. Haunting.

It is the  **noise**  that makes the hair on his back stand, but soon his smell returns, too. Food? It is here he decides that it is too complex to be a dream, and thinks about telepathy.

The place evokes a hazy, dreamlike atmosphere. Time flows oddly.

Candles flicker in front of him, far off.

He reaches what looks like a theatre scene or a grotesque parody of such. Silent theatre—a performance without text, without dialogue. A seventeenth century debauchery club. A  _tableau vivant_  of a group of characters who find themselves in a permanent state of in extremis, somewhere on a distant and lonely planet, ugly, grotesque and without mercy. Booze and sex, public provocation, pranks and practical jokes, theatrical pose, misanthrope humour, transgression and self destruction are all recurrent themes.

Pondering his little apocalyptic world and his place in it, he sees shadows spread a tablecloth, setting out utensils, and positioning silver saltcellars, cups, and mazers. There is long oak table, materializing. A chair is drawn out for him, and puzzled but mellow, he sits. He dips his fingers in ewer's scented water. Another shadow offered a towel. The music continues, quieter.

"Emma," he greets.

"Erik."

Frost's breath carried sickly sweet traces of opium smoke, though alcohol masked most of it.

She wears robes trimmed with marten fur. Decorative slashes run down the fabric. Red sarcenet peeks through from the gaps. The lack of white is noticeable—as well of the lack of exposed tits. Both never enamoured him, but Shaw seemed to like them and had them exhibited like grand museum installations. Erik wonders if she had a choice concerning the tits. ...He tells himself he has a right to be bitter as this is a dream and she did tell him that she'd kill him if he ever returned.

In the air float portraits of unsmiling Victorians. Behind them, darkness.

He's grinning that devil's grin but it doesn't horrify her like it does Charles.

( _'...Charles, is he—?'_ )

"Don't worry, Erik," she says, smiling just as wide as he does. "He will not come here. He's not sleeping, but to him, your mind has the sort of silence only sleep—or death, if I'm going to be vulgar  _like you_ —can grant. "Is it just him, or is that smile of hers not proportional, too wide, distorted like a face at the bottom of a pool? "And I wish to tell you something. It's not a nice subject, so I've tried to create a fitting scenario. I owe you."

"You owe me nothing," he says, and finds himself using Charles' velvety voice, hiding razors.

"Yes—yes I do." She looks slightly uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable doesn't suit her.

There is the sound of a bell.

Erik is soon presented with a course: a sugary, thick dish of chicken paste, rice, and almond milk garnished with fried almonds and anise. A shadow presented Frost with what appeared to be a dumpling made of pounded, poached fish, breadcrumbs, and possibly eggs. Mortrews, Erik thinks. He could compare her to Shaw, but the comparison would do her no justice. She doesn't eat with blood covering her face, she leaves no trace, no sugar. Why is she doing this? It's meaningless to eat in a dream. If she wished to, she could present the information she wishes to share in a split second and piss off.

"You are a man of action," says Frost, "not the verbal type."

Again, Erik thinks of the town, the city, the fort and decides that  _yes_ , back in the coma before he met Charles, then he was sleepwalking but acting. He remembers more of these last days than the time previous, although he's stood behind Charles, mostly silent. Talking doesn't help when the world is falling apart. Erik doesn't respond to Frost's claim—and so, proves her right. Frost smirks, but not in the way Charles smirks. When Charles smirks Erik becomes all light and can't project his thoughts.

"You're the one who messed in my head, aren't you," he deduces.

"Yes."

"Are you able to fix it?"

"Yes."

Erik takes a sip of wine. The endless procession of pepper, saffron, ginger, verjuice, and onions was starting to wear on his palate. When he grins (sneers?), his teeth are stained blood red, just like the pig of a master he once served, eating blood sausage. "And  _will_  you fix my mind, Emma?"

She washes her dish down with claret and brandy, and has a few dry heaves before she managed to gag it down. It is here he realizes she has an odd sort of respect for her, a comradeship forged in hell—this woman drinks vodka from the bottle and has endured Shaw just like Erik has. He's seen the map of scars on her back, knows where Shaw have been, heard guards talk lowly of the screaming cat from Shaw's bedroom. It is here he begins to fathom something: death and sex. The two of them, personified, dining at a table. When in Frost's presence, Erik feels fuller, more whole, but this might be an illusion. He is a wandering void, like Charles called him back when he tried saving the little girl (the 2nd time). Erik can't even remember the girl's name.

"I'm not certain if you want me to fix it." Frost sighs. "Truly I didn't like meddling with your head, but I did it,  _a lot_. I know your labyrinth head better than I know the halls of Sebastian's main hideout, a place I have stayed in 15 years sucking up to and sucking a madman." Her face remains straight. His, too. "And for  **nothing** , as he now wishes to destroy the world."

"Hasn't he always?"

"He's just found the means to do so."

"Then he must die." Erik clicks his tongue.

"Which brings me back to fixing your mind. Only one time have I acted openly against Shaw's orders, something he nearly took my head for, but blamed my misstep on womanly softness—something he saw it upon himself to punish with masculine harshness, of course." It's probably from her he's taught to master happy expressions without happiness. "I saved your life because he'd ordered your retirement for what you'd done."

"What did I do?"

"And here comes the nature of my crime against you. You see, you'd developed a resistance right under Sebastian's nose. That's the real reason of the name you bear—Magneto—and why people run when they here your name, not some lowly sabotages. But without you knowing, Sebastian found that his favourite pet project and what he considered the perfect broken soldier had betrayed him... Oh my. You were a ticking time bomb, and I wanted to instil some more time, even if I destroyed the identity you had worked so hard to establish. I did not destroy that identity's work, though,  _that_  remained. I just deleted your opportunity to be a part of it. The Brotherhood was your idea, and it continued even without you."

Erik swallows thickly. This... is a bit much. "Will I be able to get that identity back?"

"The question is if you want to."

"Why wouldn't I?"

Frost tilts her head to the side. "Do you hate humans, Erik?"

"Not particularly."

"Well Magneto certainly did. I think the subconscious idea was to have something concrete to fight against, humans versus mutants, an 'us against the world' type of thing. It's a common historical occurrence." Floating torches gutter. "But unfortunately, Magneto got obsessed with this idea. There were public executions, and talk of selective abortions. Nevertheless, the choice is up to you. But I must say, the glimpses of personality viewed from you now are much better than the established general Magneto's ever were. I never liked Magneto, truth to be told."

Charles would not like Magneto either. And Erik would lose himself—to himself, yes, but still. He asks with a twinge of desperation, "But can I live like this? Full of holes, programmed to do something and not others?"

"Technically a lot of war veterans struggle with amnesia, their lives on par to a night of heavy drinking, constantly." Frost pauses. "You must've noticed my little alterations by now, yes. Codes to stop you from becoming who you once were. I can loosen them, if you wished it."

"It would be nice to have sex without thinking about death, yes."

Frost shrugged. "It was only logical for me to meddle with such strong emotions. After all, how many times hasn't sex stopped dear Sebastian from killing me? Lust weakens one. The work you did for Shaw after I deleted your identity was better then ever. Sebastian decided you were allowed to live. For a while. Seeing as he's found his apocalypse gun, you're expendable. In fact, he doesn't care that you're alive."

"But he looked for me."

"That was an illusion, Erik. Grotesque, yes, but he requested it." The food has begun vanishing, no longer kept up by her mind. Erik hasn't eaten. The music, however, continues. Are they in hers or his mind, or some place in-between? Erik doesn't care. "Tell your telepath to work on his skills. He's powerful, but that power means  _nothing_  when he can't properly control himself. Mental illness is common in the battlefield. Sometimes, odd mutations happen in the wake of them. It is a warning. Now..." And then Frost presents the ultimatum. "Do you wish that I restore your mind?"

"Humans—mutant or not—will never change this world."

"Then change it  _for_  them."

Time drags on. Or maybe it doesn't. Hard to tell in a dream.

"Have you decided?" Frost asks.

"I don't want Magneto back. His black and white view has nothing to do here in a world of grey," Erik says. "But like I said, I cannot live like this. Relieve my off my locks."

The theatrical scene disappears, and then they are standing, face to face.

"Thank you, Emma," Erik says, feeling a million spider eggs crack in his head, losing consciousness.

.

.

Erik wakes with a strangled gasp.

And like that—something thick and clammy is laid around his head, like embryonic film. A shield? He recalls how to shield! Information fills the previous holes, and he feels more whole than ever. Not full, of course. He knows there are blanks concerning Magneto that he'll never receive, and good is that, because they belong to another. But he knows he's killed friends believing them to be foes. Members of the Brotherhood. Soldiers, lowering their guns to greet him. All dead. How many lives have he destroyed, he wonders?

The darkness in the guest (/interrogation) room takes some time getting used to, but he can feel the bloodstream inside a body, throned, in the corner sofa. Charles is staring. Doesn't move. Knows Erik is watching.

"...Have you gotten a good rest, Lehnsherr?" he asks, and the tone is different. Slow. Not mocking, but still nasty. He hasn't slept a wink, fully dressed. "Because on the seventh day, God rested. It is important for  _me_ , see?"

Ah. He's still pondering that shower conversation and the dialogue that followed... Erik's claim that Charles saw himself as a god... Fuck. But it will do no good to start the debate again. "I was pious, once," Erik says in monotone. "Extremely so. Thought the universe was too cruel to be without a final, eternal reward. Years passed. I saw things that I do not care to mention because  _you_  have seen them too. I decided that God has abandoned us. Maybe he moved on to another more successful creation, or started anew, or maybe he shut himself inside a little room, fingers in his ears, trying to ignore the prayers—hands and faces—pressing against his windows. They say the Bible is metaphorical. Is God still resting? Has he forgotten us?"

(The last light is dying.)

These reflections seem to shred new light on Charles' internal debate. He remains staring forward, unblinking, but thinking oh so hard. Erik can feel Charles' heart speeding up.

(The last light is flickering.)

Charles, illogical and feeling, struggles with the philosophy he's built for himself. At first, he seems to lighten up, but frowns as other arguments present themselves, twist and find strength in Erik's reflections.

(The last light is extinguished.)

The illness rises up; a dark windowed lighthouse; a bottle of liquor between his legs; manic depression... swallowing Hope and licking its dirty fingers clean. To create you have to destroy. Charles' destruction (because he—the sane part— _is_  Hope) hurts no less. Erik feels something inside him twist and coil. "God is dead and we have killed him," Charles quotes.

"Nietzsche, yes? He spent the last ten years in a nuthouse. His sister rewrote his texts, like we do of sacred writings. 'Sides, Nietzsche was an insane, narcoleptic syphilitic in stage three. In contrast, the men who built the concentration camps and killed and tortured the prisoners were handsome family fathers." Erik grits his teeth. He brought Auschwitz up on his own, at least. "I refuse to shut my ears. I refuse to abandon this world. I've been a liar for so many years; I feel I owe something to Truth."

"What can we do, Erik? The damage is already done. There's death everywhere. The world's core is rotting!"

"Revenge," Erik answers.

"Revenge," Charles repeats, whispering, as if the concept is holy—and this seems to be something even the mad and murderous Professor X understands. "Yes. Yes yes yes  _yes_."

Erik is still struggling with mapping his new brain functions. He lays one long finger on his forehead, blinking hard. (1) The fog is lessening, bit by bit, (2) He thinks he understands why Darkholme is angry at him, (3) ...

When he momentarily returns to the real world, Charles has crawled into his bed and is right in front of him. The skin colour is blanched, but his expression swirl with dark creativity, like a bloodless specimen of an artist.

"Can you disable the cameras?"

Not too big on voyeurism, then.

Erik does so. There are electric shrieks and then nothing.

...

He knows what Charles wants.

...

He says yes.

...

In the background, he swears he hears Frost's music. Cello and piano and shrill violins.

Erik's mind oozes rotten bile and blood. He imagines it on the purpled half moons beneath his eyes, his cheeks, his fingertips, which are currently trying to remove Charles' sweater while the bastard tries to kiss him to death. The sweater is snug, white and thin and when it presses against Charles' face Erik he looks like an Ancient Greek statue. Erik turns silent. Opens up. Crawl walls. Feels the metal rumble—a construction  _he_  has built,  _his_  ship... or the other one's. But Charles is pretty and soft and  ** _mine_**  bellow him. Maybe he's doing the same as Erik, spreading his power, feeling minds rumble and churn around him, or maybe all his focus is on himself and Erik. He prefers to think the latter and simulates it. Charles' heart is so close he could grab it.

"Hurry."

Off goes the shirt. Off go clothes, powers, and skin.

Erik twists him around. Ass in the air. He spits twice into his hand to begin preparation. One finger. Two, scissoring. "Bloody fu _ck—!"_ The shower hasn't helped because Erik's sweaty again, tasting like salt, lips cracked as he grips Charles' shoulder with his teeth and chews. Leaving prints. Punctures, so Charles knows where he's been. "Careful!" Erik drives into Charles, his messy skin greasy against Charles' as he fingers and thumbs and palms and squeezes his cock. Charles makes these yowling noises, which Erik thinks are sweet, really, not painful or meaningless for once.

"I wanna see your face," Charles gasps, "I want to, please..."

Erik's not a bad man and complies, helping him around again. The air is thick. He doesn't trust Charles not to commit violence against him in this state and grabs his arms to hold above his head. But Erik trusts Charles to moan gutturally and intermittently, as Erik touches him even though it benefits him not, nailing, pounding, thrusting, drilling, and he's pressed against him and he bites and tongues and kisses, his collarbone, his neck, his ear, his cheeks, and oh god, oh GOD, Charles probably never thought something so ugly could be so sweet or so good—

"I know that something's changed, see? I know the holes are filled with molten iron. I can't read you properly anymore, but I can feel  _you_..."

In Erik's ears, the music grows louder. He's not a talker.

The door slams open, letting in light and a very angry but immediately shell shocked soldier.

Erik stops his ministrations, caught red handed in the act. Literally. There is blood under his fingernails. Again, voyeurism isn't something that bothers him a whole not. He raises an eyebrow, sliding out of Charles.

Charles—or rather, the thing that sometimes wear Charles' skin—winks.

"Shut the door please. You're letting in the cold."

.

.

Erik exits the guest / interrogation room, showered and dressed.

The soldiers positioned outside wear masks, blocking any expression. "Is Darkholme awake?" he asks. They stare at him for a second too long, and out of a sudden he's bombarded with visions. Visions of the man he once was—and what said man loved.

Magneto loved iron nerves and razor-wire hearts. Magneto loved feeling nothing. Magneto loved being above it all. Magneto loves his followers' doglike devotion. Magneto loved them for not having to ask them to die for him. Magneto loved the icy skin of power and superiority.

Magneto loved his empire, that he has built it from the ground up, that he became something from nothing.

"Lehnsherr." Mystique stands with her arms crossed down the hall. It is said with a hatred that has grown into a mighty willow, branches writhing and whispering, impossible to be uprooted. The willow runs through the entire ship—he needn't be a telepath to understand this, or why.

"Mystique. We need to speak."

"Of what?" she asks. Erik casts a demonstrative look at the soldiers. "It is nothing we can't discuss in front of your previous allies. I am not the only one you betrayed."

He waits.

"...Fine. C'mon." She turns and walks, secure in her decision to keep him at a distance. It is not before he's

"Speak, then."

"Emma Frost deleted my memories of being Magneto."

A pause.

"This is not news to me." Mystique sucks in a breath. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"I don't know."

"Then why did you tell me?"

He has no answer. Mystique's hand reaches into the pocket of her uniform, craving (subconsciously?) tobacco. She finds none. Curses. Stops a passing soldier and demands a cigarette. Lights it, leisurely. When he smells the smoke... Ah. He's addicted—because a smoker never quits being a smoker.

"Frost told you?" A nod. "Hm. Means she's close. Good. I want her dead."

He stares at her.

"I'm not a villain," she hisses.

"I know," Erik replies quietly.

"Then don't  **dare**  to make me one. This isn't a fucking fantasy story. This is reality. And two idealistic, egocentric ignorant little shits aren't gonna change it.  _Children_... that's what you're both are. You because you're an amnesiac, and my brother because of his stupid ideals."

She sucks the cigarette, fingers never shaking like Erik's do.

"I heard you're banging my brother. Congratulations, and welcome to a fucked up family. You'll fit right in."


	6. // arc II: resurrecting vehemence — VORTEX

If it was easy to communicate the thoughts—if it had a consciousness at all—of a universal life force like the Phoenix with things like words it would go something like this:  **I must get out.**

The host is being destroyed. She is not dying. But the process can remind of scientists picking apart a cell to get to the DNA. One has to do is slowly to be precise. Connected to the host's mechanistic prison, full of tubes and wires, is a glass bowl. The host's legs are gone. Arms, gone. Hair. Breathing and shitting through tubes. To purge the host of all her senses, the scientists and mutants have performed complex operations in which sensory nerve connections to the brain were severed. Although the host retains full muscular function, she could not see, hear, taste, smell or feel, in the order as presented. Perhaps she'll get in contact with the Phoenix, finally? And it'll leave her body and go into the "birdcage" they've prepared. 

(Shaw will never understand how no one, human or mutant, has done this before him. He watches the host like a hawk, bulging belly pressing against the glass window of his office, tongue lolling out.)

The girl ceases to be human. 

She—or it, whatever the thing has become—still screams. 

She screams the name of a person she's never met.

.

.

 

 

_I Walk Alone_  by Gottfried Helnwein  
from Paradise Burning: The American paintings III, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2001-2003

.

.

A meeting at a long table.

To determine their strategy against the fortress and Factory known as the Body.

Mystique's best and brightest, 10 men and women, humans and mutants... One of them she quietly introduces like this: "We have to tell the younger girls to avoid his specialized womb massage aka fingering in gala dress." There are no saints here. Most are already seated at the table, Mystique, Magneto and Professor X included. That's what people call them. Under the exterior, the people sweat and sigh and go mad, slowly.

Erik is soaked with painful reflection instead of silent observation. Observation required nothing from him but numbness (or perhaps it originated from it?), a head filled with static and indifference, playing image after image. Reflection hurts. He attempts to visualize his pain and the absurdity of reclaiming lost memories that you can't connect to. He sees "Erik" and "Magneto" as separate individuals / invalids, and attempts to build them up and fills out blanks. Like... constructing a house. Constructing an individual. He understands the mortar, the groundwork, the basis for its structure: Auschwitz and loss, befriending death until death became an ex he avoids eye context with when passing. And passing. And passing. And finally, he himself, p—  
  
_I would like to fuck you again,_ Charles telepathically interrupts.  
  
Whatever shield he conjured yesterday night must've worked, because Erik feels his own mind closed off even if Charles is successful talking to him. It's around like a halo. Charles experimentally probes it with telepathic fingertips and watches Erik's muscles tighten, stretch. A stare. He must look like a dog, a hunting breed, sinewy and gnarled like live wire.   
  
_Suit yourself._

Erik sinks back into his reveries.

When everybody's there, Mystique finally sits down.

"Raven," Charles says with the air of a satisfied cat.

"Charles."

A bond can be stretched and tarnished. It can break. Some names will always taste bitter. It is not Erik's place to question them, but he knows that Mystique does not have a good past. Back when giving out free stuff at supermarkets—a thing Erik has only read about—was normal, Mystique would take it all. Charles will simply describe her as _not_ a buffet person. Hunger is the thing she's known the longest.

Mystique begins the meeting.

The strategy is clear: hit suddenly and hit hard.

The men and women are all so fucking gray, and Charles' social evaluation skill rots. Most of them look at Erik, who's found a spot high on the wall to study. He avoids involvement. "What a benighted atmosphere," Charles comments, running a finger along the—grey, grey, grey—table. "I'd presume something more theatrical, given your mutation." Theatrical. Mystique doesn't respond.  "Abjection! Death! Grotesqueries! Garrishness! Orgies! Gluttony! Absurdities! The worst of melodrama!" In lieu, there are grey walls, grey furniture and grey people. Erik gives him a look. Charles spreads his arms like he's about to fly off, humming off-tune.   
  
Mystique speaks through her teeth, "I'd presume you'd know when to shut up, given yours."  
  
Charles has the balls to wink. Problem is that he can't focus. He can't systematize. Can't generalize. A grey swirl of " _Boooring_." It booms through the halls. Everybody freeze, quiet, scowl.   
  
Mystique turns to Erik. "His followers… are there a chance of spies within his ranks?"  
  
Another task that requires reflection. Azazel never served anyone but himself—once. Then his arm blew off because of a stray mine. Coincidental, but everybody knew Shaw could've stopped it. A warning. Despite looking like Satan, he's very loyal. Riptide: a spoiled mute without an intelligent bone in his body, so no. Could Emma Frost stand by as the world fell apart? Erik doubts it. But then again, Frost is the sort of person who uses theremin to sooth her soul. "Most of his followers are insane," Erik says. "That, or insanely stupid. Betraying an organization from within is hard when your right hand woman is a telepath. So no."  
  
Charles says, "I want to attack head on. No more hiding. **I go first**."  
  
"I won't allow it," Raven says. 

They lock eyes.

"Family is not the most important in the face of extinction," Charles says sadly. The theatrical madness he displayed has closed its curtains—for the moment—to reveal regret. "I'm sorry."

"I know that," Mystique says, blasé. War has scratched away the little humanity Hunger left. "I forbid you to go because I doubt you'll manage to infiltrate the Body alone."

Charles' eyebrows rise.                       

A heartbeat passes.

Waves of power run throughout the ship. _Who thinks I should go first?_ Charles asks in a booming telepathic voice that resembles nothing like it and every single person in the room raise their arms in agreement. Erik, whose shields protect him, rolls his eyes. But he willingly raises his arm. He's uncertain if Mystique has mastered locking her mind for her brother. "I think people are in agreement. Regardless I want to explain myself. If you breach the walls, I can get inside and render our enemies harmless. Put the soldiers to sleep. Nobody will die. I have one demand... and that is that I go alone."  
  
"We," Erik quietly corrects. 

"I will plough the field for you, and then you can enter undisturbed."

"We," Erik corrects again, but he does not increase the volume.

"Erik will not come with me."

"W— what." He doesn't stammer. Sounds like it, because he began at the correction. Erik stands, kicks the chair and backs away.

Sister and brother share another glance. This time, Mystique nods.

And then Charles' lips move and they all come for Erik. Hands, everywhere. Swarming. Triggered by it now that his childhood memories are within reach, he starts hyperventilating. Telekinesis activates, but his mind isn't clean enough to sense the shot aimed for his shoulder. They all smother him. Squeezing.

Drowning.

.  
  
.  
  
The man wakens in the womb of a machine. There are drugs in his blood and it takes an eon to remember himself, previous events and future ones if he does not stop it. Imprisoned—like the ones in Shaw's base, oh so long ago. Erik smashes a fist against the glass so hard his knuckles bleed, screaming.  
  
"You're being childish," Charles says from the other side of the glass, his own arms behind his back. He keeps forgetting himself and slouching, only to straighten up, slouch, etc.

"I am not the child here," Erik says, but finds his own voice muted. "You don't know what the fuck you're doing."

"When I was a child, my parents hired scientists to protect me, to put up walls which hindered my powers. They were good people. They only wanted my mind to be quiet, cease me from screaming and ruining their illusion that the world was in fact not going to hell outside. It worked, for a couple of years. I read a lot during that time. I would wake up, read, eat while reading, read some more, and sleep. Experimented on Raven, when she'd let me, until she rebelled against our parents. I remember our conversations and knew where she'd go. And I went after. Walking through the doors from my cell was the bravest—I have never felt pain like it. Noise. Emotion. Spent years suffering from extreme migraines, before I managed to block 'em out. Do you have any idea what that like? Constantly being bombarded with others' feelings? Having your identity erased from the swarm of others? I am telepathy, good and bad. Who are you? You are the exterior. Metal. You're superficial and shallow and emotionless."

Erik looks at him. Blinks, slowly. His eyebrows twist into a malicious scowl, "Oh, you believe having your identity erased is the worst thing that can happen? Fuck you. Shitty rich people. I grew up without an identity! There were years where I did not know what my true form looked like. Unwanted. We do not exist, us minorities, and if we do it is to be smothered and slurped up and blamed. Even if this world war ended I do not think we would have been welcomed back into any community, country, or continent. We are outsiders."

"You're becoming your old self, Erik. Forgive them." A slight faltering—very slight, but there. "Let them live."

"I refuse to forgive dogs." He hates how muffled his voice must sound to Charles, but he also refuses to talk telepathically, blocking and blocking and blocking. (His fear of influence is gigantic after Shaw and Frost's meddling. It doesn't matter if they're stupid; it **has** to be **his** thoughts). "However, this isn't what this conversation is about, Xavier. You said we'd fight them together. That we'd survive and get our revenge, together."

"Yes. I want you to survive. I don't want you to die, so I'm going first. I'll give everything in one last try to save us all." He speaks like an idealist, one who believes in a cause bigger than himself—and is swallowed by it. A martyr, perhaps Saint Sebastian, pretty and young and so, so stupid.

"Humans will never change."  
  
Is it Magneto peeking forth?  
  
"I will change it for them."

"You're so fucking arrogant you—"

"I'm turning off the volume now, Erik. Just know that I love you."

And then Charles leaves, leaving Erik in his glass cell and complete silence.

.

.

Moments pass. People, too.

Erik stares at his audience with a mouth locked in a silent scream.

Nothing has changed.

.

.

Mystique is sitting in front of him, cross-legged. He, too, is sitting, in the middle of his cell. 

"He failed," she says, wasting no time. That's one of her best qualities. Her relationship with truth. Undiluted. "He got captured. We don't know how, but he entered and got far but not far enough to open the gates to us. Our monitors were on him until they found them all. Most likely he's going to be executed, if he hasn't already been." 

"I have to get him out of there." 

"There is no use," she says. "They know we're out to get them. We can't attack now." 

"I have to get him out." 

"How? You can't even escape this place, even if you wanted to."

Erik stands up. 

His eyes are clear.


	7. // arc III: vengeance — THE BODY

"—because you are nothing."

3.

2.

1.

Something echoes through the entire facility. It is not quite a scream, or a boom, but it's sharp enough to make the entire population in a 100km radius tremble.

Charles smiles at Shaw through the glass of his cell.

"Have you forgotten who I am?" he asks in response, and there is blood on his face and madness insanity in his eyes. "I'd rather die than surrender to your ideas."

He doesn't quite kill himself.

He just shuts himself off.

.

.

.

.

Erik awakens.

Blinks.

"Ch—arles," he attempts to murmur, stuttering, and his breath comes as a steam. He sees a fire, and glowing yellow eyes in the dark. All he remembers is being knee-deep in snow, and... Wolves, on all sides. The ones he'd seen running beside the train so many lifetimes ago. Thinking _this is how I die_ as he passed out.

"Yep. That thing just now was definitely Xavier going off his rocker," a raspy voice says.

Erik tries to stand but finds that he can't because of all the cloth that's swaddling him. He looks around, tries to make his eyes adjust to the fire in front of him. They're in a dark space. No wind. A cave?

"Hey, hey. _Easy_. I'm friendly."

"Th—they..." _all say that_ , but his lips are too cold.

"Couple more minutes in the snow and you'd be dead," the man says, and Erik can see him now, because of the fire. Light shines upon his body; thin and wiry, muscles all that's left, eyes sunken-in. He's drinking something out of a greasy thermos, and chewing tobacco which he spits on the fire. His legs are huddled in animal-skins. "Relax. We've been trailing you for a while now." In the darkness, the wolves wait.

"W—why?"

"Because the kid told me to."

"...The... kid?" 

The man sighs, explains. "Your former master had a bigger influence on the world than you can imagine. He's the owner of the Body." The horrific factory, so close. "And in the Body, he kept the kid... Jane... Her name was Jane." He closes his eyes, briefly, expression pained. When he opens them they're calm. "She was the harbourer of a powerful entity known as the Phoenix. Shaw is also older than you can imagine. He recognized the Phoenix immediately—but he needed a stronger mind than the girl's to control it. This is where Charles comes in, mind you. He walked straight into Shaw's waiting hands."

A pause.

"She sang out to me. Said I smelled like something ancient, like Death. And then, in a last flutter of her small soul, she transferred all her fears and hopes and dreams to me. And I knew I had to tell Charles what he had to do. What she couldn't, but he must. But I am dying. I am immortal in the way my body heals, but for there to be a healthy body there must be a healthy world. It starts in your legs," he says, and continuous massage them. "It always starts in your legs."

"Frostbite?"

The man smiles grimly, but does not answer.

A wolf comes over to sniff at Erik.

"Off, Chuckles."

"Chuckles," Erik repeats as the wolf stalks away.

"At least it's cuter than Magneto," the man says flatly and shakes his hairy head. "They're harmless. Actually there's quite a bit of dog in them. I found the pups at an abandoned puppy mill. I'd run away from civilization in hopes that I could come back when the problems had quieted down. In truth I was a coward. I let it up to Mystique—and secretly, Charles—to fight the big fight. Speaking of it, seems like we got ourselves quite the situation here. Charles paned the way, but I don't know if he did it in vain. Mystique is stalling. And I think there's a problem with their motors. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"I didn't really think," Erik says. Swallows. "I just think I... summoned all the metal near me. From somewhere. To get out. My primary concern was not to have a chat with Mystique, at that moment."

"Not very wise, walking out into the snow like that. Hey, don't look at me like that, it's the truth!"

To say Erik's relationship with truth is complicated is an understatement. Erik sits silently, feeling old. He's overwhelmed, drowning. A child with an all-powerful entity inside it? Shaw immortal and wanting to use it? Charles, crazy? Out of all his questions the last one is the most important, and he voices it.

"Oh yeah. Got to be crazy, to kill his mind."

"He killed his mind? That was the — the sound?"

"Oh. _No_. That noise, if you can call it that, was the Phoenix looking for a new body, right before he shut himself off. I don't know if Charles knew it'd happen or not. That the Phoenix would take over his body and meet Professor X."

"Meet Professor X?"

"You don't know him like I do."

"You speak as if they're separate."

The glimpses in Charles eyes...

 _Warning_ \- Erik's mind had screamed: _this is not a sane person_.

"Because telepaths are rare, lots of people don't know this, but strong telepaths are actually able to alter their own minds like they do others'. Obviously, this is dangerous. But Charles did not have time to work through his own problems—isolation, mistreatment, the loss of his sister—because of war. So he stored them all away. The name of this ideal is Professor X. X is the result of Charles trying to remodel himself into the epitome of goodness. Instead, what truly happened while Charles became 'good', the true X was filled up with rotten thoughts. He cracked when he got captured, and cracked further during your journey together. I could smell it. The Phoenix, hungry from being trapped in a machine, now eats everything is touches. X will be the first to go, but not until he's let loose, and wrecked as much havoc as possible."

"With that power he could easily destroy the world," Erik says flatly.

"The world will be destroyed," the man says tiredly. "There isn't any question about that. What I want, however... What Jane wanted... is for all this not to be useless. If Charles can somehow transfer ourselves... Transcend. Transfix. Tell him that she told me of the option to preserve. Tell Charles some of us are worth preserving.

"You're not making much sense."

"I know. I'm sorry. But I need you to tell Charles that he can do it... Transcend us."

The wolves come to stand around the man. Also in their eyes there are something ancient.

The fire is dying.

"Did you have a name, once?"

Even in wartimes, even at the edge of death, the human part of Erik would like to know his name.

The man smiles, exhaustion clear in his eyes, "Logan."

"Is there anything that you want, Logan?"

"You know what I want."

"No, I mean. Something else. More personal?" Erik tries to convey the meaning using his eyes.

"I don't want you to dig me a grave, if that's what you're asking."

"You're choosing to freeze to death."

"There are worse deaths. Believe me, I've experienced them. No, no, I will not die of frostbite: but I will die along with the world." He undresses, calmly and almost without tremors, and hands Erik his jacket and gloves and hat. The animal-skins enforces the idea that he is some kind of caveman, a son of the Wild. "My pups will follow you to the Body. It'll be your task to wake Charles up, and convince him to tear this world apart and bring us with it."

"The dog is sick," Erik quotes himself from a lifetime ago, finally managing to stand up. "I need to end it."

.

.

Erik enters through a huge hole in the Body. Inside it's hot, factory air humid, not yet cooled. The hole is fresh—something must've gotten out, or entered. The wolves do not follow him inside. They stand blinking. Gas from smashed chemistry regulating systems fill the area, turning into a fog. Broken porcelain, glass, debris.

The eerie humming, the feeling of being imprisoned in the womb of a machine... Without being truly aware of it, Erik has lived in a Factory all this time, and served the man responsible for the worst of them.  Erik feels a deep, deep pressure inside: the raw power coming from the Torso of the Body; he knows the being that sometimes wears Charles' skin—X, Logan had called it—is going through a rampage there. Erik does not halter and walks straight for the dead one.

Out of a sudden, soldiers turn a corner and runs straight for Erik.

He thinks about killing them, remembers Martha, doesn't.

Wise choice: they all run past him, harsh breaths and whimpers, animal panic. Some of them are crawling on all fours. None of them seem hurt, physically.

The wall on the far south trembles and cracks. A shape walks out of the hole.

Charles—

No.

Erik gags and sways a little from the petrifying stink of death.

Professor X gazes at him as if he were a pet. All around him, there's a orange tint to his skin, as if he was on fire. He presses a long slender finger to his forehead, and the soldiers surrounding Erik drop dead.

X passes him without looking at him.

"Charles," Erik whines.

X pauses.

"I know you're in there," Erik says, coming closer. "Behind all this. Logan—do you remember Logan?—told me about X, about the repressing of your feelings... I'm sorry, Charles. I—"

"Did you think me dead?" X asks impassively, flatly. He's covered in gore. Not all were 'shut off', then. "Did you think I'm not myself, currently?"

Erik stares.

X—no, wait, is...?—says, "You and Logan were wrong. The one who died is not Charles. I killed my goodness because I knew what I had to do. The other me, the old me, the kind and false and sweet me, Professor X, whatever, wanted there to be some godly grandness behind it all... Not a simple power hungry human. The other me watched Shaw speak of it all, his plans and petty desires. He spoke of you, too. The things you've done, Erik. _The things you've done_."

"I love you," Erik says, an exclamation of despair rather than a manipulative argument. "I'm sorry."

 **Charles** watches him. "I love you too," he answers, and while it's not all that emotive it's _quieter_. "I loved you from the moment I met you. You felt terribly real, even if I knew all that you'd done, while the other one couldn't. Ideals," he spits.

"Please," Erik says.

Charles tilts his head to the side, "Wanna know what I said to Shaw, before I ate him?"

Erik nods, throat tightening, world spinning.

_"Why can't you be bigger?"_

Charles holds his arms up and Erik has seen him do that before, right before they all die, bloated and terrible in the snow. Shaw, of course, did not just die—he must've exploded, somehow. The newly-freed Charles must've taken control of his body and made him do it to himself. And then Shaw had exploded, the man who'd made the end of the world possible, so small and useless, his remains splattered all over Charles, useless, useless, useless.

All those moments of fear wasted.

All those moments for nothing.

Nothing.

Nihil.

"I have to destroy it all," Charles says. "The thing inside me commands me to."

Maybe there were no Phoenix. Maybe there were just madness and despair.

Suddenly, there is another _boom_ of power, and when the walls on each side of Erik goes white he sees that all the women and men inside lie motionless, **shut off**. Erik closes his eyes and thinks of the many people he's mercy-killed.

"The brain of the body is elsewhere," Charles mutters, and continues walking, continuing his path of cleansing. All around in the Factory, people continue to get shut off.

.

.

The world dies, slowly.

Snow falls from a hole in the roof. Above the weather howls. Beneath, two men stand. One is broken, the other one ablaze with golden-orange light. The broken one's eyes are still closed and he's kneeling on all fours.

There are no one left alive, and Charles' hunger grows, and Erik hasn't said a word.

Logan's solution... To transfer, to transfix, to transcend...

It holds no happiness for Erik. He knows there are other worlds, other dimensions, **there must be** , but he cannot imagine wanting to burden his other selves with the knowledge he has gotten in this life.

"I can't move anymore," Erik says. "My legs — they don't work anymore."

"I'm sorry," Charles says, "but I'm feeding on you. On them. On your life force, as not to begin consuming other life. The Phoenix has been trapped in the body of a young girl, then a machine. The Phoenix is starved and the Earth is no longer lively enough to support it."

"I know. I'm thinking of a solution—"

"I know. I'm a telepath, remember?" even his humour sounds like a shell. Erik loved the whole of him, and the goodness was a major part of him, and knowing he'll never get it back makes him want to make sure no one else gets this Charles either. "The solution would mean having hope. I don't really have it, at the moment, as I'm devouring my own lover. The things I see. Such terrible things."

 "Wonderful, too, I imagine."

"Oh yes," Charles says, eyes stretched terribly wide, "wonderful."

"What do you want to do?"

"You're right that Logan's solution would mean we'd transfigure ourselves. The two of us, and maybe all three, would be larger than life. It's to make us – understand."

"We are different men," reasons Erik. "What we choose to do with the knowledge of this universe might differ. I," and now is not the time for self-illusions, "might grow bitter, and rage, and punish innocents because of their potential to do harm. You might try to telepathically alter yourself in fear of going crazy, like you've done here."

"That may be. But still. It's life, isn't it? Even if we can't be together, it's better than this. I love you Erik. I love you enough to kill us both so that we might live on in others."

Charles walks over to Erik, sits down. He's still blazing gold, his eyes endlessly old and pained.

"Do it," Erik says. 

The fluttering of wings.

Their souls leaving.

A vortex rips itself underneath them, Charles' hand in Erik's, and Erik's in Charles. 

They fell into it.

Like a daydream.

Or a fever.


	8. // epilogue — BLACK

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Together forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you thought this had a happy ending...
> 
> also: references to comic!verse. lots. thx for reading!!

Their story begins when they meet.

Always, like it is meant to be.

.

.

This time, they're both young men, and they meet in thick chilly saltwater, one desperately trying to save the other from himself. In the moment their eyes meet, there is the feeling that all their time spent alive has been leading up to this moment. In-between them, a secret, sacred Knowledge is born. It is the birth of the memories they carry within them. The Knowledge is a gift (?) from another world, although the _why_ is less apparent than the _how_. They never realize the full extend of its hold until after the destined parting.

Years later, all of them spent apart, Erik sees Charles disintegrated by a student.

And that, it seems, is that.

.

.

Or not.

Charles transfers his mind to his handy, brain-dead twin-brother, effectively taking over his body and living again.

Without being told, Erik feels his old friend / foe awaken, and the Knowledge of what he must do re-awakens in him again with a startle. 

.

.

This time, Erik brings about an extreme destruction—leaving millions dead and a screaming Earth in his wake—and Charles, never quite able to bring himself to kill him, brainwashes him and deletes his memory.

Erik lives quietly for a while, before someone helps him escape and become himself again, and more destruction happens, and Charles wants to scream.

He tries again, but harder this time. As a result, Erik drools and is fed with a spoon while Charles grows empty-eyed beside him.

.

.

This time, Erik uses Mjolnir and reverses Earth's magnetic poles, finally, finally. Millions die and he feels nothing. Amid the chaos, Erik snaps Xavier's neck. To the mangled corpse, he quietly says, "In the past, you've had a hand in every one of my failures. Toppling the best laid plans. It had to stop."

It had to stop.

It **had to**.

.

.

Many a time Charles is paralyzed. Many a time Erik is imprisoned.

Sometimes they play chess, when both of them are reduced to this half-state, like they're charging their energy until the next big clash comes along.

"Do you ever wonder...?" Erik asks a question he can never finish.

Charles looks away, and then down at the chess table, which shows a stalemate.

.

.

In this life, Charles takes the killing blow meant for Erik.

Sick of it, Erik remodels himself into the person that Charles once was, rebuilding the X-men and the legacy he left behind. He even reunites with his estranged wife and child. Still, they sometimes ask why his eyes are empty.

.

.

In this life, they both fight an enemy who threatens to rip the Earth itself apart.

"I wish we would've done this more often," Erik says with a sigh.

Charles watches him burn to death and feels his heart evaporate.

.

.

"Mutants are the future," Erik says.

"We can live in peace," Charles says.

The two of them stand at opposite sides, wielding opposite ideals, forever doomed to clash. 'Together' rings in their head like an undercurrent. The word is a mockery of what they cannot have.

.

.

In this life, they're both old and dying.

"We have to stop this," Erik says.

"I know," Charles says, so tired.

"I don't want to hurt you anymore."

"I know."

"I love you," Erik wails, and repeats it like a prayer. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

"I know," Charles says, and this time his voice breaks.

They die in each other's arms, to the fluttering of wings.

.

.

In this life, they're both children, meeting in a kindergarten. Erik is a little younger, and Charles is a little older, but they gravitate towards each other regardless.

The world is inexplicably peaceful, mutant and man living side by side.

...It won't last.

Charles smiles at Erik, and Erik at Charles, in the time before Knowledge.


End file.
